Devil's Kin
by SnapshotsOfEternity
Summary: Cursed by blood and with no other path to choose than the life of a criminal, the life of a pirate, it seems neither was destined for happiness. AcexOC. Some chapters might be rated M/ bordering an M.
1. Bottom of the Bottle

First of all, sorry for rewriting this whole thing before I barely got started. Posting the previous version of this story has taught me quite a few things though, and thus I take it as a learning experience and apologize for any inconvenience on your part. Hopefully you will agree with me that the story is better this time around.

There have not been any major changes to the first chapter - except for the end, and some minor details here and there. And Callie's personality should now be more consistent. If not, please let me know! I really hate when I write something and then discover that I have written something completely different earlier in the story.

Secondly, I am still not a native English speaker and thus mistakes probably will occur (especially with the commas!). I am in the market for a very patient beta-reader, who does not hold back on the truth, so expect it to be beta'ed later on.

Thirdly, I am always looking to improve, so feedback is greately appreciated! It would mean a lot if you took the time to write just a few sentences about your experience with the story ;)

Finally a few notes about the story:

The dates and places are there to help you (and me) to keep track of the story. The dates and most of the places are made up.

Updates will probably be slow and inconsistent. I have learnt that if I rush myself, my story tends to suffer for it, and I lose my inspiration. Sorry :(

This story will contain mentions and hints of sexual activities, swearing, violence, alcohol use/abuse and probably a lot of other things that deserve to be on a warning list. Still I don't believe it to be excessive or explicit. If you disagree please let me know and I'll consider changing the rating.

**One Piece is © Eiichiro Oda**, additional characters are of my own design.

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><p><em>As much as it hurts,<br>__Ain't it wonderful to feel?  
><em>_So go on and break your wings  
><em>_Follow your heart 'til it bleeds  
><em>_As we run towards the end of the dream_

_ - End of the Dream, Evanescence_

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><p><strong>Onboard the Nocturne, south of Disko Island, The Grand Line<strong>  
><strong>Jun. 5<strong>**th**** 2407**

"You're a whore Callie," Hawken chided unsympathetically as he held her long hair out of the way. "You're a bloody whore, and a drunk, and I'm tired of looking out for you."

Her hands were clinging desperately to the railing in an attempt to keep her trembling legs from collapsing beneath her, and, at the same time, preventing her otherwise unstable body from falling over board. Somehow the two opposite forces, one dragging her towards the deck and the other towards the churning sea below, managed to balance each other out and she remained on her feet.

She would have smacked him, right then and there, if not for the fact that her hands were currently preoccupied. She would even have settled for a glare in her first mate's direction, but, alas, as the morning had progressed and her intoxication gave way for the hangover, the usually pleasant rocking of the Nocturne had turned into something much more malevolent. And now, it seemed, the ship had come up with the idea to toy with what was left of the contents of her stomach and their ability to stay there.

It was a struggle to breathe between the convulsions her brain recruited to rid her body of the malign derivates of last night's drunken escapades. With the exception of her hands, her limbs were shaking uncontrollably and all sense of strength had momentarily deserted her. Tears forced their way through her tear ducts and down her cheeks as if of their own volition, a result, she knew, of the cramping in her abdomen. She felt like the most miserable creature on the planet. If only she could crawl right into a hole and die…

Her diaphragm contracted again, and she vomited over the side of the ship. The foul substance seared its way through a passage it had no right to invade and left a burning, itching sensation in its wake. She was long past the point where her stomach contained anything but stomach acid and the leftovers of the water Hawken had forced into her when they left port. Yet up it came. Up and down to the fish.

The red-headed captain dry-heaved a few more times and spit what seemed the last bit of fluid she had left in her body over the side of the ship. Her mouth tasted very much like a garbage can.

Her best friend handed her a new glass of water and she rinsed her mouth, daring to drink only a little to ease the burning in her throat. The rest followed the vomit over the railing.

Her legs finally gave way under her and she sank to the deck with a moan. Leaning her back against the balustrade she hid her face in her hands to still the headache, which pounded inside her skull, and to block out the glare of the sun. As she sat there something equally cruel to the rocking of the ship happened upon her. With a vindictiveness she should have expected, the whole world turned on her and began to swirl. It spun until everything blurred and reality became a puddle of messed up colours. She had to fight the nausea, which welled up inside her once again. Even in the darkness behind her eyelids the spinning did not stop, but without light to activate the photoreceptors in her eyes, at least the effects were a bit more endurable. Her ears were ringing and her head was a throbbing knob of agony. She felt as if it might explode at any time, spilling brain matter and broken dreams all over the boards of her ship.

"The definition of a whore, Hawken," she mumbled crossly through her hands in response to his earlier accusation, "is a woman who indulges in sexual activities for payment. Since I don't charge, the word you are looking for is 'promiscuous' or 'nymphomaniac', not 'whore'."

"We spent most of the night and the entire morning looking for you?" He scolded, not bothering to respond. She could not see his face with her eyes closed, but, if the acid in his voice was any indicator, she could imagine the expression, which marred his usually calm countenance. "And when Denn finally found you," he went on, "you were passed out in a bed beside a man with no recollection of who he was or how you got there."

"You don't have to remind me," Calico snapped irritably while daring to squint through her lashes. The light pained her though and her eyes flooded in response. She quickly closed them again. "I was there."

"Then do I have to remind you that you were still so intoxicated that you could not even stand on your own feet? Do I have to remind you she had to drag you back to the ship because you were unable to walk? What if you had run into the Marines? What if a bounty hunter had happened to find you?"

His voice rose with every word until he was practically yelling at her. She put her hands over her ears to drown out his voice, but it did not have the desired effect. She suppressed the urge to tell him not to shout at someone with a hangover. It would most likely be akin to pouring fuel on a fire, however, and she decided against it.

"You could have been captured. You could have been killed! Bloody hell, you could have killed yourself by accident, you were so drunk!"

The headache and her general hangover made her short-tempered, but she knew instinctually that a shouting match would only make it worse. She was in no mood for one of his lectures though, so with a withering glare in his direction, she stumbled to her feet and headed for her cabin on uncertain feet.

"But it doesn't matter to you, does it? You don't care if you live or die. You don't care how your behaviour affects your crew, your NAKAMA!"

If she had been able to think clearly, she would have known he would follow her all the way until she shut the door in his face. If he was angry enough, he would not even respect the door and just barge into her private quarters to continue to reprimand her as if she was some misbehaving child. But due to the pain, and the exhaustion, and the aldehydes, her brain was not functioning properly, and so she found his presence a few paces behind her completely unexpected and intensely annoying.

"Or is it that you are trying to fill the hole he left behind when he ditched? But you know what Calico? It won't work. Not like this. To lose all semblance of common sense, throw caution overboard and drink until you pass out won't make you whole. And it doesn't matter how many men you fuck, Ace is gone, and you can't…"

In the blink of an eye, she was facing her first mate, her hair fanning out in a bright red whirlwind around her head from the speed with which she had spun around. Given the state of her, it was not the smartest thing to do. Balance almost failed her, the world blurred again, and her stomach decided to try out gymnastics so she had to subdue another nausea attack. Despite her less than impressive appearance though, the look in her eyes was unmistakable. "Don't," she warned, her voice as cold as steel and as sharp as the swords she normally carried by her hip.

And for once Hawken shut his mouth.

She turned back to her original path and stumbled onwards, covering her mouth with her hand. This time, however, it was not to stall the time before she vomited on the deck, but rather to stifle the strangled sound, which tore itself from its cage behind her ribs. It hurt. It hurt to be awake, it hurt to remember, but mostly it just hurt. It hurt so fucking much that she felt like tearing out her heart just to make it stop.

She knew her best friend would reach out to her, that he was moments from apologizing. But she could not stand to hear it. She had to get away, to lock that part of her life back in its prison and go on pretending it had never happened. She staggered away from him, towards her cabin, and though he called his apology after her, she pretended not to hear.

"… but that does not mean this argument is over, Callie," was the last thing she heard her first mate say before she shut the door behind her. She noticed how much weaker his voice suddenly sounded, but at this point she was beyond caring whether he knew he had crossed the line or not. She was beyond caring what he thought of her behaviour lately or the fact that she was hurting him, her crew, her friends. The truth remained, however, that he was indisputably, unacceptably right.

Calico leaned against the closed door for a moment, and tried to regain control over her breathing apparatus. She was beginning to hyperventilate and the resulting lack of oxygen would only make her headache worse.

She knew she had scared him away. She did it with almost everyone and it was a source of continuous amazement that her crew had stuck around this long. She had thought that he had genuinely meant it when he said he loved her. He had seemed so sure. Yet somehow, he had detected what she really was and had replaced her with someone who was less of a calamity. Though, of course, he had not bothered to tell her first.

She was a bloody idiot that was what she was. She was so fucking stupid that she had not realized how much he had grown inside her before she had torn it out. And now she was left with a big, black hole inside, an emptiness so vast that even if she managed to stuff infinity in there, it would not be enough to fill it. And even if there had been some way to convince him to stay with her, some little part of him that had actually meant those words, it was too late. She had sworn she would kill him if she ever laid eyes on him again and he had run off with his tail between his legs. She had ruined every little chance there was of winning him back.

She could only imagine that he hated her, that he longed to carve out the memories of the two of them together. That he wanted to get as far away from her as possible.

And he was right to hate her. He was justified in his desire to want to get away. She was a monster. The Destroyer indeed.

Her breathing was coming in ragged gasps and far too rapidly to allow for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide between the alveoli in her lungs and the capillaries of her circulatory system. She knew she was losing the carefully constructed control, which had been ingrained into her for as long as she could remember. She was falling apart. Hell, she had not been this messed up since she and Hawken set out as pirates. But that was not enough for captain Mihawk Calico. Oh no. She absolutely had to take everyone around her with her as she stumbled into the abyss. Even if she did not intend to do it, she knew she was forcing her misery on her crew, clogging up the airways of their friendship as she sought for an outlet for the emotions she desperately, futilely tried to bury within herself. She did not deserve any of them. Not her crew, not Hawken, not _him_.

Feeling lightheaded, it seemed as if she literally tore her thoughts away from that particular person and that particular incident, which had left her in this state. She inhaled deeply, sucking oxygen down into the very bottom of her lungs until her chest almost hurt from the pressure. She had not lost it completely, she realised; the ability to focus on one single task until it became her whole world. Then, she exhaled until it felt as if there was no more air in her lungs. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Breathing was all there was.

With her thoughts fixed on keeping her breathing even she staggered the remaining distance to her bed and tumbled onto the soft mattress like a ragdoll, all energy spent, all reserves momentarily exhausted.

Within moments she was already half asleep.

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><p>Thank you for reading my story :D<p>

Please leave a review.


	2. Save Me From Myself

Finally chapter two is up! It has only taken a long (long!). I have changed the order of the chapters, but for those of you waiting there is a bit of Ace in here ;)

I have the next few chapters planned out, but it will probably take me a while to write them (unfortunately, I have a lot on my plate).

**One Piece is © Eiichiro Oda**, additional characters are of my own design.

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><p><em>I must give the impression<br>__That I have the answers for everything  
><em>_You were so disappointed  
><em>_To see me unravel so easily  
><em>_It's only change  
><em>_It's only everything I know  
><em>_It's only change, and I'm only changing_

_-Still, Ben Folds_

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><p><strong>Onboard the Nocturne, open sea, The Grand Line<br>Jun. 7****th**** 2407**

Calico, captain of the Nocturne, woke in the pale light of predawn and felt anything but rested. She was covered in cold sweat and her breathing was laboured as though she had just recently concluded a training session. What had left her in her current state of distress, however, was as different from her training as fire was from water. She loved to train, loved to move, to glide through the poses as she fought imaginary enemies. She loved how it felt when her two black swords became an extension of herself and the way the world narrowed until the fight was all there was. And she hated the nightmare. It was the same damn nightmare that always haunted her dreams. The same damn nightmare, which had deprived her of sleep more or less regularly for the past seven years. And she hated it. Hated it to the ends of the Earth and back again. Hated it, hated it, hated it.

For a moment she continued to lie in bed, staring at the wooden ceiling of the captain's cabin, and tried to re-establish her inner calm. Then she sat up, swung her legs over the side of the bed and, with her elbows on her knees, buried her face in her hands. Her long, flaming red hair dangled in unkempt tangles around her face and down her back as if it was a curtain hiding her from the world.

She got up and pulled the curtains from the great panorama windows in the stern and for another moment she just stood there, staring at the open sea, which stretched endlessly before her. The sun was just making its first appearance, lighting the top of the waves on fire and turning the waters into a sparkling mass of jewels. She felt no joy at the splendid beauty though. Not now, not today.

She would have to get dressed soon. She would have to face them. She had put it off the previous day, preferring to stay in her cabin rather than to look her crew in the eyes, but she could not stay hidden here until the end of days. She had to eat at some point - a fact her stomach emphasized by growling loudly at her.

Two days ago, she had been too hung over to keep anything down and by sunset she had given up trying. The morning after, when she woke with a headache from dehydration and a hollow, rumbling stomach from lack of food, she had eaten a banana and an apple from the bowl of fruit on her desk and taken a long drink from the tap in her private bathroom. When her basic needs had been satisfied, she had crawled back to bed to try and go back to sleep.

Half an hour later, her meagre breakfast had insisted to come back from whence it came.

As the day progressed, she had eaten the remaining fruit, but even though she had spent the day doing absolutely nothing but wallowing in self-pity, two bananas, a grapefruit, an orange and three apples had not been enough to fill the pit in her abdomen. She had gone to bed hungry.

Today there was no more food in her cabin, however, so whether she liked it or not, she would have to leave it. Besides, she tried to convince herself, she was the captain of a pirate crew. She could brave her band of misfits. She could handle her friends… Right? Right.

Still, an hour somehow passed before she was ready to leave her quarters. She encountered no one on the way from her cabin and, except for Barra, the galley was deserted as well. She did not mind though. The silent chef was the only person aboard the Nocturne who could not verbally scold her and so she found the worry in his gaze much easier to ignore. He fixed her breakfast while she went in search of something to spice up her morning tea. In hindsight she should have noticed that the cook did nothing to stop her though the eyes, which bore into the back of her head, was enough evidence of his disapproval. It was not until she discovered that the cupboard where the rum was usually kept was empty that she became suspicious. She distinctly remembered stocking up on several bottles of the spiced South Blue Gold she favoured in the port before Disko Island.

Barra would never tell her where they had hidden the bottles. Aside from the fact that someone had once stolen his tongue, he was not a supporter of her excessive drinking, and she really had been on a bender lately. So Calico went in search of the booze herself. She knew the eccentric chef hated when someone else rummaged around his domain, that he had everything neatly ordered and that he would spend hours undoing every little disturbance she caused. Today, however, she did not care.

The reality was that while she might be able to face her crew and friends, she could not bear the memory of _him_. She had spent the past two weeks practically drowning every recollection of their time together. She knew it was a bad way to handle her heartache, knew that she was probably doing herself more harm than anything else. She knew it with the certainty of experience.

Yet there was this constant ache in her chest that she could not handle, a sensation like something was trying to suction up her insides and restricting her lungs until she could not breathe. His betrayal was like a knife wound in her stomach, the blade twisting and turning every time she moved. Some times it would disappear for a moment or two as her mind focused on something else only to be plunged back into her flesh with a vindictive violence, which left her gasping and shivering. The only things that could distract her for longer periods of time were her training sessions, which required a massive amount of concentration and self-control, and the consumption of so much alcohol, that it left wide gaps in her memory.

Was she anyone else, Mihawk Calico would have cried her eyes out long ago. She would have been reduced to a broken wreck, lying motionless in her bed as misery and grief washed over her in tidal waves of despair. But the young captain was a stranger to tears, a stranger to sorrow. She channelled her desolation into part rage and part self-destruction and preferred to drink until she blacked out rather than face the cold reality that he was gone. She would not cry for him, she knew. Not a single tear. She had not cried when her mother declared that she had no love for her daughter or when the boys in the village threw rocks at her and called her names. She had not cried as her homeland went up in flames and sank to the bottom of the ocean. So who was he to deserve such lament?

Her search turned her up empty-handed. There was no alcohol to be found anywhere in the galley – except for the blue plastic bottle, which contained the household spirit Barra used for cleaning. For a moment she considered downing it but though better of it in the end. It would be mixed with emetic and Calico was sick of throwing up.

In stead she sat down meekly at the table and let Barra place a plate of fruit, wholegrain bread and butter in front of her. A moment later a cup of steaming tea followed. The satisfied smirk, which curled his lips, did not escape her attention, but she was well enough acquainted with her crew to know that the mute could not have come up with this on his own. Oh no, this had Hawken written all over it.

She ate her breakfast in silence while she plotted bloody vengeance against her best friend. Anger bubbled through her as she stabbed at pieces of melon, boiling in her bloodstreams like a cheap medicine for the pain while she chewed. She grasped it with eager hands and let the heat fill her up until every nerve in her body was thrumming with unreleased aggression. She would do anything to occupy her thoughts, anything to make herself feel better.

"Where is Hawken?" she asked the chef when she had finished eating. He pointed dutifully towards the deck and slunk back into the relative safety of the pantry where he made a great show of rearranging a stack of canned tomatoes. Calico shook her head in half resignation and half annoyance, and stomped off in the appointed direction.

She found her treacherous first mate and almost every other member of her crew on the deck, even Denn and Bol were in attendance though they had had the night watch and should be fast asleep at this hour. Hawken was standing with Val near the railing, with his back towards his approaching captain. As she watched, he lopped a bottle of golden liquor into the ocean with a casual move of his arm. Her anger had died down to embers since she left the dining area, but now it ignited into a roaring fire that threatened to consume her. How dare he! He knew her better than anyone; he knew how much she was hurting. Damn him, he knew she needed the alcohol to forget.

"What is the meaning of this?" she asked, her voice like a whip in the breeze, which had picked up since she woke that morning.

Hawken's countenance reflected his determination when he turned to face her, one bottle of South Blue Gold still in his hand, and her eyes zeroed in on it instantly. She moved to intercept him, knew what he intended even before he began doing it. The redheaded captain was fast, but this time her second in command was faster. Before she could snatch it from him, he hurled the bottle as far out to sea as he could manage. She could only stare as it sailed through the air before it vanished into the waves.

A moment of silence stretched on for infinity as the world balanced on the edge of a knife, her crew eyeing her anxiously as if to get some premonition as to which side it would tip.

"What the fuck did you just do?" She exploded as the veil of shock lifted from her mind. She could not believe what she had just seen. She could not believe that that asshole had just thrown all the liquor aboard _her_ ship overboard. "What the fuck have you done?" she shouted as she turned on him, teeth barred and eyes flashing. Had she been angry before, it was nothing against the desperation-infused torrent of fire, which welled up inside of her. Calico was at a point where she would almost relish a fight with her best friend just to get her mind off of things she would rather not think of. But even if she had not been, her anger was not something to be pushed aside just because she might hurt somebody's feelings.

Hawken met the force of her glare calmly; the stubborn steel in those dark eyes told her that this time he would not back down either. He would not let whatever was on his mind go until she had heard all he had to say, and the firm line of his mouth informed her that he would not relent until she complied with his demands. His mind had been made up.

"This is an intervention," the dark-haired man proclaimed, his voice completely steady, his eyes resolved. The rest of the crew had found their way to his side, even Barra had ventured out of the pantry – although it was only to take shelter behind Bol's broad frame – and though she detected a mixture of uncomfortable, nervous and, in Barra's case, fearful faces, they all mirrored Hawken in his tenacity.

"A what?" she asked through clenched teeth, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"An intervention," her first mate repeated, "This is where your friends and crew, who all love you, tell you that your drinking, your denial, and your self-punishment has gotten out of hand. We won't stand idly by and watch you destroy yourself, Callie. Not anymore."

She was deaf to the kindness in his tone, the genuine worry for her well-being. She was blind to the pleading faces aligned behind him. And though she knew that he was right, she did not care to admit it. "You are telling me that you just dumped all the alcohol aboard this ship into the ocean because you think I have a bloody drinking problem?"

"I don't think you have one, Callie, I know." Stable, strong, unbending, Hawken did not yield as much as an inch.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Her voice was incredulous as she screamed at him. Did he not see? Did he not know that she was barely hanging on, that she was just inches away from stumbling into the abyss. Did he not care that the only thing, which kept her sane was a bottle and the fleeting warmth of a stranger's arms.

"You don't want to face reality, so you drown the truth of your broken heart in alcohol and random men. And then you ask what's wrong with me? Here's a wake up call Callie, you are drowning and all the things you have done so far have only made you sink that much faster. And I get it. You literally chased him off with a threat on his life, and though he probably deserved it, I can see you are regretting it now. But this is not the way to handle your problems, Cal, and it never will be. You've got to stop destroying yourself."

"You think I don't know that?" she asked, her eyes flashing like lightning. The wind had picked up and was playing with the strands of her bright red hair, a likeness of the first wee flames that just might grow to become a raging wildfire. "You think I don't know that I am hurting myself and all of you?" She made a gesture, which indicated all of the men and women gathered before her. "He betrayed me, Hawken! He tore out my heart and he stomped on it. I. Fucking. Loved. That. Idiot! And not a second goes by where I don't hate him for doing that. Or hate myself for letting my anger reign supreme when he came after me. And I am sorry that it's affecting you, I am! But what the hell am I supposed to do? Aside from offing myself I don't see…"

"Calico!" It resonated like a gunshot across the deck, short and sharp and to the point. Hawken only ever used her full name when he was pissed, when she behaved like a child or when he was tired of fighting with her. She supposed that all three reasons could be the basis for his outburst, but which was the primary incentive, she could not say.

"What the fuck do you want from me?" she screamed at him, flaming red hair dancing around her face.

"I want you to stop behaving like a spoiled brat. I want you to grow up and take responsibility for your own actions. Damnit Calico, I want to see you smile again." If she did not know better, she would say that he sounded almost desperate.

She smiled at him then, a venomous, sarcastic smile while her eyes remained as hard and cold as ice. "And how do you suggest I do that, hm?" Her words were laced with the same poison, which wrecked havoc on her heart. The same poison, which threatened to swallow her whole and never spit her back out. "I can't just let it all go in a heartbeat. I can't just forget everything that happened. Everything that could have been." She would not cry, she knew. She never cried.

"Callie." His voice was softness and the promise of safety. He would never hurt her, his tone swore. She wanted so badly to believe, yet what had he done so far other than cut off her escape.

She got a sour taste in her mouth as nausea welled up in her throat. Her eyes widened in shock and she raised a hand to her mouth to preferably prevent her half-digested breakfast from spilling on the deck. Three long strides took her to the railing and she just had the time to bend her torso over the side of the ship before she heaved bread and fruit and tea into the waves below.

"Callie?" It was Hawken again, but this time the worry was back in his voice. She could not answer him, as she retched a second helping to the god of the sea.

Two days ago it had come as no surprise that she was violently sick the entire day. Yesterday, she had been a little shocked when she vomited her breakfast back up, but had shrugged it off as the after-effects of the previous night's drunken escapades. After all, she had been really, _really_ drunk. But today? Today she could not write the fact that she had just thrown up a perfectly good meal off as the consequences of her wild night out. She could make no excuses when she had felt perfectly fine since yesterday morning and up until this point.

"Cal, are you alright?"

Great, she thought, now she would have to go see the Doc as well.

"How long has it been since you last had you period?" the Doc asked, looking up from between her thighs. She had spent the last hour in the infirmary where he had fussed over her in the attempt to discover why her stomach refused to accept her morning meal. Then, not so long ago, he had gotten a somewhat funny look on his face and told her to undress.

**Later**

Calico was staring at the ceiling, trying to abstract herself from the fact that the middle-aged man was currently probing around her vagina. Not that it had not happened before; he functioned as a gynaecologist as well as a doctor onboard the Nocturne, and for someone with as great a sexual appetite as she, a regular check up was needed to ensure that everything was as it was supposed to be. But just because it happened on a somewhat regular basis did not make it any more pleasant.

"I don't remember," she told him in a dethatched voice that was the result of her trying not to pay attention to his examination. She could not recall having had her period in the past two weeks, though admittedly, her recollection of that period was rather fractured and inconsistent. Before that there had been her fight with Ace and before that there was their meeting in The Stepstones. The last period she could recall was six weeks or something in the past. But if that was the case, she was two weeks late…

Wait. Hold on. Stop right there!

"What _exactly_ are you saying?" she asked him, dreading the answer to her question. Surely it could not be…

"You have some symptoms, which might be an indication," he told her in a sterilized tone and she knew he was uncertain of how she would react. Her temper was notorious. When she did not respond, he continued, "I'll need a blood sample to make certain, but I'd say you are about five weeks gone."

**Black Rock, The Stepstones, The Grand Line  
>May 1<strong>**st**** 2407**

The Stepstones was a group of islands, which broke through the sea in a semicircle and, if you ignored the vegetation and the fact that they were not flat, resembled stones that had been laid out in a garden pond so you might step on them. Once, long ago, there had been only one island: a massive sleeping volcano. One day, however, the sleeping giant had come to life in a flurry of lava and ash and destruction. The magma chamber underneath the volcano had been emptied, and what was once a mountain had collapsed into the hollow beneath it, leaving a giant crater as the only evidence of its existence. Once the volcano buckled, the ocean had come flooding in to fill the caldera, the water boiling from the heat of the molten rock, and had left only the highest points of the ridge, which formed the edge of the crater, above sea level.

Their tiny refuge was called Black Rock, a very fitting name in truth. The isle was composed of black basaltic rock, the smallest of groves and an even smaller black, sandy beach where you could land a boat. It jutted out of the ocean on the far side of the sunken caldera, furthest from Black Top, the largest isle, where their respective pirate ships were currently docked.

They sailed out in the hazy ephemera of dawn to spend a day alone, a lazy fog blanketing the sea, which the first hints of day had coloured a delicate pastel purple. On the way they watched the sun be reborn and enjoyed a simple breakfast of fresh fruit in the dinghy as the great star vanquished all others.

They reached Black Rock before the sun began to burn, and tied up the boat so the tide would not steal it. Calico's clothes scattered as if they had a life on their own, and the she dove into the water like a mermaid, who had been gone from her rightful element for too long. Ace remained on the black shore, arm crossed and a scowl on his face. The devil fruit he had eaten had bestowed awesome powers on him, but it had also forever denied him the opportunity of joining her. She playfully stuck her tongue out at him as she floated alongside the shore. He watched her for a time until he waded into the water to try and catch her.

The effect the ocean water had on him was immediate; his movements lost the vigour they had upon dry land and he became rather pale under his freckles. Yet he did not relent, even when the water reached his navel and Ace finally managed to trap his squealing, laughing companion in his arms and drag her onto the tiered, wave-smoothened cliffs.

If not for the unnatural warmth he emitted and the softness of his skin, Ace could have been carved from marble in the image of one of the mythological gods, which had been the preferred motif of Pre-void Century sculptors. He had an almost flawless body with his narrow hips, his toned stomach, and his broad chest and shoulders. Every inch of him was tight, coiled muscle, worked into perfection by countless hours spent training his martial combat skills. And he was hers. All hers.

His eyes seemed as if they were illuminated from within as he gazed down upon her; two radiant dark blue gemstones in a freckled, sunburnt face. She stared into them while she lay there, trapped beneath the weight of his body, and her heart fluttered with happiness. She strained her neck to peck him ever so lightly on the lips.

"I've missed you," she told him in the seconds before his lips crashed down on hers and all conversation ceased for a time. It had been almost a month since they last saw each other, and their longing for each other found expression in the release of the desire they had held pent up inside since then.

Hours later they had found a place in the shade, away from the scorching rays of the sun. Not that Ace would have minded: he never seemed to be bothered by neither heat nor cold. But Calico was just a regular human being, and unlike her blue-eyed consort, she was of a much more delicate constitution.

It was fairly cool where they sat, him leaning against the rock wall and she reclined against his naked body, using his chiselled torso for a backrest. Their clothing was currently cooking under the sun where it had been lackadaisically strewn and since forgotten earlier that same day. The two of them did not worry about their nakedness; they were lovers and as such, used to seeing each other in various states of undress and they considered it a small chance that anyone would come climbing over the rocks and discover them. On a day like this, one would have to be mad to venture out on a hike across the dark magmatic rock, which made up the bulk of the island; with the heat and the relentlessness of the summer sun, the cliffs became what could only be described as nature's own frying pans.

She told him of what had transpired since the last time they had met while Ace played with the tangles in her hair as he listened. They would be a bother to comb out later on, and though his fingers' game with the salt-stiffened strands was pleasant, the twisting and twirling was not exactly creating less knots.

"Kaname insists we're all going to die within the next two months," she confided and shook her head over her unconventional navigator. "I have no idea what basis he has for them, but he makes such predictions from time to time. And until he is certain that his prophecies are not happening, he spends the entire time fretting and worrying if we will all be dead within the hour. It's driving me nuts."

"Honestly Cal, I would have told him to shut it a long time ago. He is always so bleak and gloomy. It's creepy." Ace faked a shiver and she could not help but laugh.

With a sigh she turned serious again. "To tell the truth, I wonder at the same thing sometimes. But he is an exceptionally skilled navigator, and once you get to know him, he is actually quite amiable, more amusing that anything really - when he is not having a doom-is-upon-us fit, that is. Besides he is part of my crew, which is the closest thing to family I have, and family is all about accepting each others' quirks and differences– or at least that's what I've heard." She could not quite keep the bitterness out of her voice when she said that last part.

Before Ace could say anything, however, she quickly changed the subject.

"Kaname is not the only one causing problems either. There have been two attempts on Val's life in the past month. Two! And one of them actually came rather close. The assassins are picking up the pace, and she is scared. She never says anything, and she tries to put on a brave face, but I can see the fear lurking under the surface; it is in her eyes, in the way she moves, in the way she places herself in a room. She trains constantly, and she is getting better at defending herself every day, but sometimes I fear it is not enough. I'm afraid of letting her out of my sight. She's just a child Ace, I don't understand how she can deserve something like this."

"I don't know," he said thoughtfully. "You still don't know why they're after her?"

Calico sighed again. "She's not opening up. I suppose she will when she is ready and when she learns to trust us. I don't know what that girl's been through, but with the way she's acting, it has to have been bad."

"She'll be alright," he said in a reassuring tone and kissed her hair. "She's got you now, remember. You and the crew."

Her lips curved into a smile almost of their own volition. "Your optimism never ceases to amaze. I just hope you are right."

He blew in her ear. "Didn't you know? I'm always right."

She chuckled at him. "Oh, I bet you are."

"We got a new crewmember too," he informed her, and she could detect the frown on his face without having to look at him. "Her name's Magara and Pops gave her to me for God knows what reason. One of the first things she did was to smack me over the head with a cod."

The mental image his words left her with was just too comical and Calico could not contain the laughter that bubbled up inside of her. It burst from her like water from a broken dam, slowly at first, but with steadily increasing power until she was curled up between his bended legs in hysteric laughing cramps.

Ace pouted at her - he looked incredibly cute when he did that - and sent her an accusing stare. "It's not that funny you know. My hair smelled of fish for a week."

She just continued to chortle at him until her stomach hurt and she could barely breathe. "Why?" she managed to ask when she regained a bit of control over her respiratory system.

"I made some joke about her being the new fish on the ship, and she just picked it up and slapped me with it. Then she said 'I might be new, but I'm not defenceless'." He was still pouting and she burst out laughing all over again.

Once her mirth died down she returned to leaning against his bare chest and he wrapped his arms around her as he told her more of this newest member of the Whitebeard Pirates. They continued to debate the various members of their crew for a while, and when the subject was emptied, lapsed into a comfortable silence while they watched two seagulls playing tag over the water.

She tilted her head back so she could look up at his face and he saw his chance to steal a kiss. "I saw this wanted poster the other day by the way," she told him when their lips parted, "of this grinning boy with a scar under his eye." She gave him a big smile, eyes glittering. She knew exactly how he would react to this piece of information. "I believe his name was Luffy." She saw his eyes widen and could not help but chuckle at his expression.

"Are you kidding me?" he exclaimed in excitement, arms tightening around her chest as he hugged her closer. His eyes were shining, a big grin plastered on his freckled face. "Luffy's got his own wanted poster? What did it say?"

"Well, he's a Rookie for sure, though that is almost a given with you for a brother. He took down a few big shots – for Blue Boys anyway – on his way up, so he's not without skills, though I already knew that from your stories. It's his first poster and the list of offences is not particularly long; currently all it says is piracy, public disturbances, and destruction of private property, which I suppose will make him a preferred target of many bounty hunters, since none of his crimes are exceptionally menacing. However, the price they are willing to pay for his head might give pause to some of them, while it might make others consider him an easy payday. Dead or alive he is worth 30 million beri."

"30 million?" Ace said, suddenly serious, "Damn, his first bounty is higher than mine was." Then his grin returned and he laughed, "Any bounty hunter who is dumb enough to mess with my little bro' is in for a surprise. He'd be able to trick even the most suspicious of them into believing that he is harmless, I'll bet my hat on it! I can't wait to see him Callie. It's been four and a half years since I left him on Goa, but I feel like a lifetime has passed since then!"

"I know the feeling," she told him, her voice pensive, her thoughts suddenly far away. It seemed like a lifetime since that wretched day when she had watched as her home was obliterated from the face of the earth. And surely it had been ages since her uncle sold his soul to get the Marines off her back, or when the first present from her father arrived. Sometimes she could even fool herself into believing that her crew had always been together.

"But other times, I feel like it was only yesterday that I beat him into a bloody pulp because he would not leave me alone, " Ace continued, unaware that she was not paying attention. "And most of the time I can't believe that years have passed since I taught him how to throw a spear or kick someone in the face. I can never seem to picture him as anything but that young kid I left on the coast of Goa. In my head he is still that stupid, stubborn boy he always was."

He nuzzled her neck, leaving gentle kisses along her shoulder, and Calico snapped out of her own reflection on the concept of time.

"You weren't paying attention were you?" he asked with a teasing look in those twinkling blue eyes and a smirk, which curved the corners of his mouth.

"Sorry, no," she confessed and twisted in his arms so she was facing him instead. "My mind was focused on something _completely_ different." It was her turn to smirk as she closed the distance between their lips, deepening the kiss until she felt him rise to attention between them.

"I love you," he breathed against her skin, the words a gentle caress. She could feel his heart pounding in step with hers, a strong, resonant beating beneath his ribs and she returned the words fervently as she spread her legs to allow him entrance.

**Onboard the Nocturne, open sea, The Grand Line  
>Jun. 7<strong>**th**** 2407**

She had not believed him at first and had demanded that he redid the tests. He had done it, if only to please her, but when she asked him to do it again, he kindly informed her that no matter how many times he tried, the results would be no different. She had been meaning to storm out of the infirmary then, but she had been so confused and so shocked that she could barely stand on her own two feet. However, when she tore the door to the doctor's domain open and lost her balance, Hawken had been waiting and caught her before she could fall.

"Callie?" he said in a questioning tone as he brushed her hair out of her face. His big, green eyes were laced with worry as he stared into her golden ones and she knew he could read the alarm on her face. "What is it?"

Her eyes welled up with tears. She knew he dreaded the answer to that question as much as she had feared what the Doc would tell her when she had lain on his examination couch with her thighs parted. He would not be expecting what she was about to tell him though. The tears spilled over and rolled down her cheeks in gentle, yet persistent streams, and she could not even find the presence of mind to brush them away.

"Tell me," he urged her, though fear was plainly written in his features. She could not say what terrible scenarios were running through his mind. He knew as well as she did that she never cried and thus, he reached the only logical conclusion that what she had learned in the infirmary could only be the most awful of news.

She opened her mouth, trying to find words to express the horror, which had become her reality, only to discover that speech had deserted her. She gaped like a stupid fish while the tears continued to cascade from her eyes and her best friend became more and more anxious.

"I," she managed in a halting, hiccupping voice she did not recognise as her own. "I'm," she swallowed something which seemed to have stuck itself in her throat and closed her eyes for a second. Once she said the words, it would be true and she would have to accept it. She swallowed again and forced the words through the veil of incredulity, horror and fear, which hindered their passage from concept to reality.

"I'm pregnant."

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><p>The **Later** -part bugs the hell out of me, but apparently I can't simply make a "larger than normal" space between the two lines. Details I know.. :

Anyway, thanks for reading. Please leave a review!


	3. The Broken Man

Aaaand I'm back!

Though I think saying "Sorry for the wait," will eventually get old, I feel inclined to say it anyway. So, sorry for my tardiness, I am a horrible, horrible person :'( I have a lot of good excuses though: Christmas, snowboarding in the Alps, trouble with my bachelor project, my family, my roomie, etc, though I think it will be unfair to burden you, dear reader, with it.

A few comments about this chapter: It is from Aces point of view, which is pretty obvious when you start reading. It takes place more than a year after the current Callie-timeline. It might be a bit controversial as it deal with physical and mental torture (although not as much as the previous version of this chapter) and thus might not be for the fainthearted.

I hope you like it :)

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><p><em>I wish you are left aching just the same<br>Like the hands that hold the flame though  
>I'd never let you burn<br>I hope that you hurt like the way I did  
>Screamin' like you heart was split oh<br>I hope you learn  
>You learn the hardest way to burn<br>_

_-Lost in the Fire, The Storm_

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><p><strong>Impel Down<br>Oct. 11****th**** 2408**

Ace had fought them from the instant he regained consciousness after Thatch had crushed him like an insignificant insect. He had struggled from the moment he set foot on their territory despite the fact that his resistance only brought him more suffering. In the beginning he had been hissing and spitting like some wild thing, but later, when he adjusted to the thought of himself as a prisoner, his opposition had been a wall of silence while he desperately sought for a way to escape. None had presented itself though, and before long he was marched aboard a Marine battleship and sailed to Mariejois for his trial. He had expected to be taken to Enies Lobby, since that was where all pirate trials took place. When he had learnt the reason, however, he had roared with laughter. It was just like the Luffy he remembered to tear down everyone and everything which got in his way or threatened people he loved, the consequences be damned. His mirth had soon died, however, and had been replaced by a sense of foreboding he could not abate.

Through the trial, which was a parody at best, Ace had remained adamantly mute. He had been black and blue from the so-called interrogations, but his own discomfort had soon been forgotten as he had watched the three-headed "judge" argue with himself. It had been quite comical, though he had not been able to find it within himself to laugh. No, his situation was too dire for laughter.

When he was old enough to understand the concept of life and death, Garp had explained his heritage to him and informed Ace that should the truth about his parentage reach the wrong people, he would be hunted down and killed for no other reason than the curse he bore in his blood. As he grew, he had come to understand the fickle ways life operated and learnt that in time all men must die, yet whether death waited around the next corner or after fifty years, no one could say. Sometimes he had pictured his own demise, wondering about the end. Life was a whimsical thing and he could train and fight to protect it, but simple chance could still take it away in a flash.

When he had set out for a life of piracy, Ace had known that his chances of dying sooner rather than later had just been amplified. This was the Age of Pirates and he would not make it anywhere unless he tested himself against other pirates, the Marines would be intent on stopping him and once he proved himself, bounty hunters would seek the price on his head. It was a precarious position at best, and it was a very likely possibility that one day he would be defeated in battle or caught by his enemies, that some day he would be dangling from the end of a rope or end his days in the bowels of some obscure prison.

Of course he had known. But had he ever truly believed it? No. Not a chance. 'They'll never take me alive,' had always been a given; he would go down fighting or not at all. He had never believed he could be captured, never believed he would some day become a prisoner. He most certainly had never thought it possible that he would meet his maker at the end of the executioners axe as some sick gesture to show the public that the World Government still had the upper hand.

Yet here he was, with just that prospect looming over him and the firm knowledge that unless someone incredibly powerful and, perhaps, incredibly daring intervened, his life would end on his 25th birthday, barely before it had begun. It was so unreal, so incredibly unfair that he should die that even as they had led him from the courtroom, some part of him had refused to believe it.

Since his trial, Ace had spent three days in the brig of the marine battleship, which was to deliver him to the guards of Impel Down. Through the creaking wood he had felt the maelstrom, which connected the three main outposts of the World Government and the Marines, propel them forward with a speed greater than any he had ever experienced onboard a ship.

Now they led him up from below deck to behold the approaching structure, no doubt knowing the deteriorating effect it had on anyone bound for a life in its depths. The common sailors gibed at him as they secured his shackles to the deck, their insults glancing off of him like water over a riverbed. He had to admit, though, that seeing the waves break around the sturdy stones of the notorious gaol was not kind to his self-deception, and he felt the factuality of his situation settle on him like a ton of bricks. With its thick stone walls, deceiving like the top of an iceberg, its artillery and its guards to operate it, the underwater fortress was nigh impregnable. In addition, the Marine battleships, which stood sentry in a circle around the above-surface part of the structure, did not make an inviting target for any pirate with the least bit of sense. Ace could puncture all those silly fantasies of Whitebeard showing up to save the day and rescue him from the big, bad marines.

It felt almost surreal as the marines marched him through the gates to the prison. His hands were secured behind his back with a pair of seastone shackles, had been almost since the day he was caught, and they dug into the sensitive skin of his wrists and inflicted a relentless pain in the joints of his shoulders and elbows. His ankles were connected by a sturdy chain that was long enough to allow him to move around, but so short that he had to consider every step lest he should stumble and fall. Still, he held his back straight and his head high, refusing to show even the slightest bit of fear. He denied them even the smallest hint of the devastating defeat he had already suffered, disallowed his sentiments to shine through the armour he had built around himself.

He briefly considered to attempt an escape, but quickly discarded the idea. His devil's power had robed him of the ability to swim, and, since the ocean surrounded the prison for miles and miles in every direction, he had nowhere to run. It would be ridiculous to try to steal the ship, which had brought him here; it was much too big to be crewed by one man, and even if that had not been the case, the battleships would have given pursuit and sunk him long before they would see him escape. And he was still shackled, unable to run, unable to access his powers. To escape on his own was simply an impossible task. He was going down. Down, down, down, to the bottom of the sea to await his execution.

Then as he was finally coming to terms with his own mortality, those heavy gates closed behind him with resonating finality and he knew that the day they opened for him again would be the day that he died.

And in that light, what was the point of fighting when the outcome would never be any different? And even if there had been some place to run to – which there was not – what was the point of trying when he would never have been able to get there? What was the point of walking with his back straight and his head held high, when the only thing he had to be proud of was that he had not broken under torture?

Nothing. There was nothing left. Nothing to fight for except more beatings and more pain - things he could do without. Nothing to live for except the end.

Nothing. He was already dead.

The guards of the prison stripped him naked to make him ready for what they called the Baptism and Ace had never felt more exposed in his life. He had never been ashamed of his body, never quite understood the concept of modesty, but though he customarily walked around bare-chested, only a handful of people had ever seen him completely undressed and he had always been the one who decided to drop his clothes himself. But here, now, they took away his armour and his shield and he stood exposed and unprotected, surrounded by enemies. They took away his identity and dehumanised him, degraded him to a lesser creature with no rights and no means to fight back. And he felt vulnerable, ashamed, tarnished.

Then they threw him into a large basin of scalding water.

Ace had always liked the feeling of water against his skin and how his body floated when he submerged himself in it. In recent years however, he had refrained from most everything that involved bathing except for what was required to maintain personal hygiene. Since he ate his Devil's Fruit, water –and especially seawater – had acquired a now familiar numbing effect on his muscles as it robbed him of the ability to swim. He always felt more or less lightheaded depending of the salinity of the water and how much of his body was in contact with it, and he had never much appreciated the sensation of being about to faint.

The guards had not dared to remove the heavy seastone handcuffs, which kept him relatively restrained and, more importantly, relatively harmless, and they dragged him down. It was a strange feeling. The seastone had already stolen his powers and the strength of his muscles, but he had worn them so long that he had become somewhat used to the sensation. So as he drifted toward the bottom of the pool, he was surprised to discover that the water neither amplified the already existing response of his body nor produced any additional effects to immobilize him.

It was odd to say the least, but for a moment he found a simple joy in the sensation, a pleasure he had pushed from his mind long ago but never truly forgotten. It even felt almost pleasant. The heat of the water did not affect him; he was fire incarnated and even though his powers lay dormant and out of reach within him, no amount of heat could physically harm him. He did not fight the sinking either. Not only was he unable to do anything if he had wanted to, but dying was dying, and if it ended here he would be spared the wait and the humiliation. All he had to do was inhale the water and it would do the job for him.

It did not end there, however, though in truth he wished it had. They only left him in the basin for a couple of minutes before they pulled him up. He tried to fight it, but in the end his body betrayed him, and a series of violent coughs rid his lungs of the water he had drawn in. Then they doused him in a liquid substance, which had a strong, repugnant smell and burned his skin like acid, before they plunged him into a second pool of water. When he re-emerged, all hair on his body had disappeared and his skin had been itching and irritated.

Finally they strapped him spread-eagled to a cold stone table, which had a faint stench of old blood to it, and Ace revised his earlier credence: this was the most exposed he had ever felt in his life. Then they brought out the shears.

Thus far Ace had been too wrapped up in a daze of defeat and despair to acknowledge much of anything that had been going on around him. He had been too proud to show them any of the thoughts and feelings, which churned inside his head. He had been resigned to the notion that fighting was pointless. However, as his eyes caught the light, which reflected off of those sharp, polished clippers, all thought activity ceased and all previous convictions went out the window. Ace struggled like he had never struggled before, his muscles bulging and flexing as panic and desperation gripped him. He could not allow those instruments anywhere near his body. He would not!

Afterwards, Ace could not remember if he had screamed or not. He could not even remember if it had hurt. He had no idea what had become of his testicles after they had been removed, but that at least was something he was certain he never wanted to know.

Baptised, sterilised and member of an exclusive community, he never wanted any part of, he was given over to the prison's resident torturers. They in turn welcomed him with open arms and a game to make him scream.

**Impel Down, Level 6  
>Late 2408<strong>

He could not say if he had been with the torturers for hours or days, for weeks or for months. All he knew was that it had felt like an eternity and that it had not lasted the almost three months he had to stay in this wretched place.

Ace was no stranger to pain, and through experience, he had learnt that no physical pain could hurt so much as the insatiable agony other people could inflict on your emotions. Bodily hurt faded, and relatively fast too. Mental pain lingered to torment you for years.

He had thought that nothing they did to him could hurt half as bad as when Sabo died or when Callie swore she would kill him if she ever laid eyes on him again. He might as well have believed he could swim.

The torturers had been instructed to wring every last bit of information from him, to steal every little secret they could get their crooked hands on. Yet by the time they set to work, an ember of the fire, which lived inside of him, had sparked to life and rebellion had seen a new dawn. It might be that he was going to die, but he was nothing if not stubborn, and damn him if he was going to betray the people he loved in the process. He would not tell them anything, he had vowed to himself when he first woke to captivity. Not as much as a word. And he intended to keep it!

They had tied his handcuffs to a chain in the ceiling of the menacing dungeon he had landed himself in and heaved him up until only the tips of his toes touched the floor. Other chains had been dangling from above like dead snakes woven of interlocking metal links; a ghastly decoration for a dreadful room. The walls had been adorned with tools he had not cared to look at; instruments he had known would be applied to his body sooner or later unless he gave them what they wanted.

Before they began he had managed to wrap his legs around one of the soulless creatures – they did not deserve to be called human – who would carry out what the Marines had called persuasive interrogation. With a tight grasp and a quick twist of his thighs, he had broken the man's neck. He had beheld the rest of them with a daring, reckless look in his eyes, challenging them to approach and hoping beyond hope that they would stay away. They had barely even flinched. And at some point between them trying to strip the flesh from his back and prying the nails off of his fingers, he had experienced a moment of clear-headedness and discovered that these people did not care about the World Government and its orders, about the Marines, or who he was and what he had allegedly done to deserve this. They would have tortured him for no other reason than their love of inflicting pain on others. They would have done it for kicks alone. And the more he resisted them and the longer he prevailed, the more they enjoyed it and the more persistent they became in their desire to break him.

Still, orders had been given, and orders had to be obeyed, and so they asked their questions, ceaseless repetitions of the same sentences all over again: "Where is Whitebeard and who is with him? Who is your father and what is your relation to Strawhat Luffy? Where is Strawhat and how do you defeat him?" In the end he had been begging them to stop hurting him and once the dam broke, the words would not stop flowing. He had spilled his guts all over the bloodstained floor in a voice that was raw from screaming. He had told them of his brothers and sisters, of Pops, of Callie and their relationship, of Luffy and his crew, and of Thatch – that bastard. It had all been an incoherent ramble from a broken, sobbing wreck.

And as a reward they had treated his wounds, returned his pants and sent him to his cell in the deepest, darkest pit of Hell to wait out the remaining time until his execution.

For a while he had been thankful: thankful for the respite from torture, thankful for the cease of the endless questions, thankful for being able to sleep without being forcefully awakened every time it seemed he had just closed his eyes.

But then, ever so slowly the realization of what had transpired penetrated the clouds of relief, and Ace did not like what he found when the fog lifted.

He had gulped down the shards of his resistance when he broke, and the jagged edges had left a burning in their wake that he could not abate. It was not the things that had gone down which pained him the most though; it was what had come up to make room for it. He had given it all away: Pops' failing health, their allies and enemies, the number of crewmembers, what kind of weapons they had, which devil-fruit powers were represented in the crew, Marco's bloody suspicion, how much Dennison hated turnips and how Magara like to slap people with fish. He had cursed Thatch to the deepest pits of Hell and back twice over. He had told them of Luffy and his incredible stupidity, his ability to draw people to him, his crew, his stretchiness, his love for meat and his cluelessness about women. He had rambled about Callie: her beauty, her passion, her fire. He had slandered her for being a natural flirt and praised her for being a fighter. He had scorned her temper and sobbed about how she had sworn to kill him.

And Ace came to miss the torture. Surely a deceitful, despicable creature such as himself deserved to suffer. Surely being such a vile piece of shit merited to scream in agony until his lungs gave out and his vocal chord ripped from the strain.

Yet no one had laid a hand on him. The guards had given him food and water and they had called him names as they did so, but as insulting and degrading as they were, they had done nothing to still his crave for punishment.

His body had still been painted in intricate patterns ranging from deep purple, almost black blotches to pale blue dustings from the beatings he had taken and the torture he had been submitted to. In some places the colours had already faded to curious shades of green and yellow, but had still added to the abstract work of art, which was his skin. The bruises on his arms and back had been crisscrossed with something that much resembled several handfuls of dried spaghetti, which a clumsy fool had dropped on the floor. Except for the part where they had been the same colour as dried blood.

It had been all he had, and Ace had made do with it. He had relished the pain he had been able to extract from his beaten body, savoured it both as a penalty and a distraction from for the crimes he had committed: Rub a bruise here and the pain would twist his thoughts away from the image of Pops as he learnt what Ace had revealed. No one could physically harm the old man, Whitebeard was the closest candidate for Pirate King, he was the strongest man in the world. No, no one could cause him bodily harm, but Ace could imagine the disappointment, which would mar the features of his face when he learnt how Ace had betrayed him, betrayed everybody.

Put pressure on a contusion there and the vision of the entire Second Division of the Whitebeard Fleet as they were slaughtered, would fade from his mind. The men and women, who served under him, were strong, but not as powerful as Pops, and if they were caught away from the fleet and alone, he could not say if they would make it, he could not say if they would live. It coiled up inside of him until he felt like tearing out his insides just to make it stop.

Yank at the chains around his wrists so the sores opened again, yank harder until the scab, and perhaps a bit of skin, came off and Luffy lying in a pool of his own blood, or Luffy being dragged through the same gate Ace had passed through not so long ago, would disappear. Luffy was a silly, reckless boy, who took stupid chances and never stopped to think about the consequences. And though he could hold his own against common pirates and Marines and had defeated Crocodile, Ace could not believe, not even in his wildest fantasies, that the black haired boy would make it against a vice-admiral or a real shichibukai or another of the World Government's special agents. He had already pitted himself against the entire ruling organ of the world by declaring open war on the World Government, and Ace had given them the means to defeat him.

He would rather have his thoughts focus on any of them, however, than have them turn towards a certain redhead. The only thing, which had been able help him then, was to rub his back against the stones behind him until the gashes from the flogging had wept tears of crimson heartache. It had been agony. Pure and utter agony. Most times it had left him sobbing like a child, but sometimes the pain had become so great that his brain had no longer been able to cope and had chosen to shut down in stead. Those were the times Ace hoped for every time he had done it, those moments of blissful, thoughtless blackness.

He had deserved the pain and still did. He deserved to hurt so much he could not breathe. And when no one else would make him, he just had to do it himself. It was better to be aching than to be weeping anyway.

Yet the bruises had faded, and the scabs had healed, and abnormally fast at that due to his powers. Ace had never thought that he would scorn the superior healing rate, which came as a bonus when you ate a Devil's Fruit, and distinctly remembered envying Luffy this ability when they grew up. Yet in the faint fluorescent light of bacteria, in a room fathoms and fathoms beneath the surface of the ocean, Ace had wished that his body had been like that of a regular human being.

Ace vaguely recalled that Carlen had tried to get trough to him at this point, but he had been too far off the rocker to pay any attention to anything but his own misery. He had been too busy trying to invent new ways to inflict vengeance on himself. It had not taken him long to come up with the perfect solution:

Never bite the hand that feeds. It was the first rule in the convicts' figurative guide to prison life, the only rule that mattered if you wanted a relatively pleasant stay. You could insult Magellan to a degree when he made his rounds, or the vice chief when he came to check up on things, but never, under no circumstances were you to bother the creatures, which supervised the worst captured criminals in the world – unless, of course, you had masochistic tendencies.

So Ace had thrown insult upon vicious insult at the minotaurs whenever they were near, he had kicked them when they brought him food, and knocked over his water so it splashed over them and soaked through their thick, black fur. He had utilized every affront he could come up with, and to his utter relief, it had worked.

At first they had only beaten him, and Ace had rejoiced at the pain. But as he persisted in his offence, they had taken away his food.

Ace had gone hungry before. When he lived in Goa Kingdom and prowled the Grey Terminal with Sabo and Luffy, it had not always been easy to put food on the table. Yet it had always been a matter of how far they had been willing to go to sate their hunger; the Grey Terminal consisted of the entire amount of waste products a city could produce, and there was always something to eat in the trash. And, as their strength grew, the surrounding forest had been able to supply the boys with ample amounts of food. Yet, if everything else had failed, Dadan and her band of mountain bandits had always been willing to feed him, albeit it was never without making a show of complaining about the eating habits of young boys.

When he had set out to sea, Ace had even known starvation. There was always a limit to the amount of provisions you could store aboard a ship and occasionally those stores were depleted. Sometimes a storm had blown him off course or some kind of intervention had happened upon his path; be it Marines, other pirates or something else. Sometimes it had been due to bad luck alone. And when the food was gone, all you could do was cast out a fishing line and hope to get a bite, or to shoot a seabird, if one was unlucky enough to pass by.

However, behind the bars of his cell with his wrist and ankles bound by heavy seastone chains, the guards left him only the taste of betrayal, which lingered in the back of his throat, to sate his hunger, and there, Ace had learnt what it truly meant to starve.

When the first mealtime had come and the grotesques had passed him by without as much as a glance, he had accepted it for a new means of distraction and had tried to decide whether there was any link between the way his abdominal muscles cramped and the sound his stomach made when it rumbled. However, when they continued to deny him the tasteless gruel, which passed for food in this hellhole, he had begun to lose hope that they would ever feed him again. It had been a torment to watch the other inmates eat, to hear them slurp up the only thing he wanted in the world. He had begged and pleaded, grovelled and cursed, but it had done him no good. The thought of food became the sole focus of his world until he reached the point where he would have eaten his own flesh had he been able to reach any of his extremities.

It was not until the Chief Warden had come by on one of his inspections that there had been put an end to it. By that time, all Ace's strength had deserted him, and he had hung limply from his chains, very much resembling a ragdoll dangling from the hands of a little girl. He could not have raised his head to acknowledge them if he had wanted to. He had barely been aware of their presence.

"What was your plan?" Magellan had hollered at the monsters, so angry that blobs of poison had been released from his skin. "To starve him to death and deny the world the public execution of this wicked criminal?"

So this mealtime, they slackened the chains enough for him to be able to eat and placed a bowl of gruel in front of him. It was bland and slimy and altogether disgusting, and nothing had ever tasted half as good. He wolfed it down with tears running from his eyes and even licked the bowl when he was done. Then he retched it all back up.

Ace barely stopped to consider before he dipped his hand into the now stomach acid-flavoured gruel and showed a handful into his mouth. He was so hungry.

"You shouldn't eat it all," his cellmate said flatly from the other side of their shared cage, "and you certainly shouldn't eat it so fast."

It was as if he noticed the presence of the skinny, white-haired man for the first time. Ace stared at him suspiciously, almost bristling; skinny men were always hungry. This was Aces food. He had longed and waited for it for ages.

"You've been starved boy," the old man explained almost patiently, "your stomach can't handle that much food at once."

Ace sent him another sceptic glare before ignoring his advice altogether. However, when the food came up a second time, Ace came to the conclusion that the scrawny creature just might be right, and as much as it pained him he had eaten like a snail and only a small portion of the twice- up heaved porridge.

* * *

><p>The bit of lyrics at the beginning of this chapter is from a Danish artist, that I think you should check out. I think this particular song, Lost in the Fire, fits Ace and Callie's current relationship very well and it has been an inspiration for much of the story.<p>

As for the castration part, I feel I have to explain a few things. When I read the chapter about Aces arrival at Impel Down, I actually believed to have read that this was what they did to him. That, of course, might be attributed to the translation from japanese to english, me not being a native english-spearker, me being a morbid sort of person, or that it actually was what happened (though I doubt it since, well, it does not really fit Oda's style). I also think it makes sense from a we-are-a-horrible-monstrous-instrument-of-justice-and-should-you-ever-escape-at-least-your-bloodline-will-end-with-you-and-spare-the-world-of-other-wicked-criminals perspective. I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone other than myself, but I see the World Government as wholly unfair and incredibly cruel to those who cross it, and castrating it's prisoners is just one way of showing this. Other than that I too am a horrible person, who loves to torture my characters and it makes for a good topic of further mental degradation come future chapters. Sorry, sorry (not really).

A further note: I have no idea how the human body actually reacts after a period of starvation. I have tried to look it up, but I have not really been able to find anything useful (probably me looking the wrong places) an thus have decided to go with this version, since I think it illustrates what Ace has put himself through.

Well, until next time ;)


	4. Lost Among The Free

**A big thank you to all the lovely people who have decided to drop a comment, add my story to their favorites or put it on their alert list. It means the world to me!**

We are back with Callie in this chapter, and until I finished writing it earlier this day, I had a clear idea of what would happen with her storyline for at least the next couple of chapters. But writing this sort of ruined that. That is one of the things I love most about writing my own stories: how I am able to adapt and flow with new ideas, and instead of trying to incorporate them into the already existing story as I once did, now I allow my storyline to change if I feel these new ideas contribute something better to the plot. It is very exciting.

There is a lot of talk in this chapter, and I feel I must warn you that writing a believable dialogue is not my speciality. In fact I feel I really am rather horrible at it. But I have written and rewritten it over and over and over so many times that I am sick and tired of it.

Also, since my definition of what is appropriate for teenage readers might differ from that of others, I will just mention that this chapter contains alcohol use/abuse, mentions of sex. The flashback in this chapter contains violence in relation to child abuse, and if you prefer not to read about those things, please skip that part. Is it skirting an M? Idk...

Otherwise I hope you enjoy this chapter ;)

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><p><em>I remember when you told me<br>__I should live like I'm dying  
><em>_And not to close my eyes  
><em>_While everything burns._

_- Now Or Never, Madina Lake_

* * *

><p><strong>Onboard The Nocturne, open sea, The Grand Line<br>Jun. 14th 2407**

There was a gentle knock on the door to the captain's cabin, so soft that for a moment the lone occupant within considered to pretend not to have heard it. Yet with the uncanny silence that was currently inhabiting The Nocturne, Calico knew she would not be fooling anybody; the knock had been soft, but in the void usually occupied by voices and the sounds of people training, cooking, cleaning or just going about daily life, it might as well have been a gunshot.

She had spent the past four days in her room, sealed away from everybody else onboard the ship, and caring little for the company of others. She could not bear the looks they sent her; the worried glances that lingered on her person from the moment she stepped into their field of vision. They sympathized with her, she knew, but she could not stand their pity, and she had no idea how to handle their concern.

When her crew had discovered that the extent of her self-imposed solitude included avoiding mealtime gatherings, they had taken it upon themselves to bring her food to her cabin. The dishes they served for her were nutritious and healthy, and though Barra was an exceptional chef on a daily basis, she could tell that he put in an extra effort to make them as delicious as possible. She had concluded that perhaps it was his way of trying to cheer her up, though it was kind of counterproductive and only added guilt to the emotions on the long list of her sentimental shortcomings, since she had not had much of an appetite since she slammed the door behind her four days prior.

Whoever was at the door now was not bringing her food however. Barely an hour had passed since the mid day meal, and no one aboard could suspect her of being hungry after such a short period of time. In fact, she had barely touched the ratatouille and had only nibbled at the nut pâté, which occupied the plate on her desk.

The knock came again, more insistent this time, and the redhead scowled at her hands. She was sitting on the side of her bed, half-dressed and with her hands folded in her lap. Her hair was in disarray and she looked anything but presentable. Not that it mattered. Not that she cared. There were no one on the ship whom she cared to make herself presentable for, and even if there had been, it would make no difference. Who would want a woman pregnant with another man's child anyway?

When the shock of her current predicament had passed, she had demanded that the Doc removed the foetus. When he had refused, she had argued her case, pointing out that her excessive consumption of alcohol during the first month of the pregnancy might have damaged the foetus, that a pirate ship was no place for a child and that not only did she not want the child but if she was forced to give birth, she would resent it because of the circumstances concerning its conception. He had remained resolute though, and so she had resorted to begging, which progressed to anger, which evolved into the greatest argument that had ever taken place onboard the ship. In the end she had snarled that she would find a doctor to do the procedure on the next island and had proceeded to barricade herself in her cabin to brood on her misfortune.

The fist connected with the sturdy wood of her door a third time and the young pirate resigned herself to the cruel whims of fate. It was probably Hawken who had come to tell her that she was behaving like a spoiled brat and that she had to suck it up because he had had enough of her moping. If she continued to ignore him, she knew he would barge in despite the very obvious hints that she did not want company. So Calico gathered the covers around her naked torso and mentally prepared herself to face whoever was intending to intrude on her privacy. "Enter," she called though in truth all she wanted was to shout at Hawken, if it really was Hawken, to go away.

As the door swung inwards however, it was not Hawken who stepped through. It was Denn.

Denn was the embodiment of everything a man could want in a woman. She was full breasted, with wide hips and a narrow waist, which gave her an incredibly enticing figure. Her hands and feet were petite and made her look delicate, while her honey brown bedroom eyes, long mahogany hair, and sensual lips combined to create the perfect mixture of beauty and sex.

"Captain," she greeted the redhead while she pushed the door closed with her hip. She was carrying a rather large, steel grey tomcat, which leapt from her arms the moment his yellow-green eyes fixed on his owner and stalked towards her on silent paws, tail held high.

"Denn," the skipper in question responded flatly, not bothering to rise from the bed. She stroked the cat between the ears and down his back as he rubbed against her leg. He mewed insistently and she would have sworn there was quite a bit of annoyance in that sound, as if the great grey cat was telling her just how much he resented not being able to cross the threshold.

"He was sitting outside," said the striking brunette, and motioned toward the cat with her head as she took a seat on the bed. "He was not very pleased to be shut out."

"I can tell." Calico smiled a wry smile and picked the creature up from the floor to rest in her lap. The cat, which she had initially named Fat Ass, but now just went by The Fat or Fatty, had taken an imediate liking to the young captain, but absolutely despised most every other person in the world. Except for Barra, but Calico suspected it was because the cook "dropped" bits and pieced when he chopped the meat for dinner.

They sat in silence for a while, Denn looking at Calico, Calico looking at The Fat. The Fat was not looking at anything; he had his eyes closed and was purring loudly while his mistress gently stroked his fur.

"Did you know that Hawken gave him to me not long after we became pirates?" the redhead asked after a time. She did not know where the sudden urge to share the story came from, did not even know why that memory was the one, which had taken root in her thoughts and refused to let go. The brunette shook her head no. "You know what we did. What I did," Calico stated matter-of-factly and paused there, recalling the image that had forever burned itself to the inside of her eyelids.

"Callie," the other woman half-whispered as if she was about to try and convince her that it had not been her fault.

The redhead shook herself out of her reverie and did not give the brunette the opportunity to say more. "Neither of us handled it very well initially, how could we possibly when our crime was that horrendous. Hawken was grieving, he repented of what we had done, but I, well, I was spiralling out of control." Her lips twisted to form that wry, bitter smile from before, a smile that held no humour or happiness. "I was fifteen you know, fifteen and I drank like a man who had been on the bottle most of his life, drank until I threw up everything but my memories and continued to drink until I blacked out. Then I drank some more until eventually I passed out somewhere, too intoxicated to know up from down, man from woman, bed from gutter. I let men touch me, kiss me, fuck me. I was too drunk to tell them no, and it didn't matter anyway. I left it to Hawken to pick up the pieces of me, to scrape me up from the gutter or roam the cities in search of me, because I had stumbled off with some guy during the night. He was suffering too, but I didn't care, all I saw was me, me, me and my own pain.

"He always sat by my bed when I woke - watching over me while I slept, I suppose. That faithful morning when The Fat came into my life, I woke with the greatest of headaches and before he even had the chance to speak, I was out of my bed and en route to the bathroom to vomit my dignity into the toilet. He stood in the doorway and watched me, oozing disappointment and I pretended not to notice as I had done every day for weeks. When I had cleaned up, I went back to the bed and it was only when he sat down beside me that I noticed the tiny ball of grey fur he held in his hands. When he handed him to me, I was all rejection and dismissal. What was I to do with a kitten? But he did not relent and as the day wore on this small creature, with his hunger for warmth and comfort, his curious nature and his soft purr before he fell asleep on my stomach, grew on me. His helplessness became my rescue, and in him I found a way, even if it was only in a small measure, to atone for the lives that had been lost because of me."

Calico rubbed the cat between the ears and his purring intensified. It was not everybody onboard who knew why Hawken and she had chosen to live a life on the lam, but with the exception of Val, who was new and not truly a crewmember yet, everybody knew of the events, which prevented either of them from ever going back. But the young captain had never told anybody of the things which took place immediately after, and she did not know why she was suddenly telling the other woman of the only other time in her life when she had truly hit rock bottom. Normally she only discussed the painful memories and her innermost fears with Hawken, because despite the recent hitches in their relationship, he was undeniably and irrevocably her best friend. Still, Denn was a good listener, and Calico trusted her with her life and the lives of everyone she loved. But, most importantly perhaps, the redhead and the brunette shared something Hawken could never have part in; an understanding born from the fact that they were both women and thus knew the inner workings of a woman's mind.

"These recent… events…," she continued," have taught me something I did not know before; that whenever there is something I cannot handle emotionally, some sort of painful affliction upon my sentiments, I become self-destructive, and now, like then, I just dump my burdens on everyone close to me and give a shit about the consequences. The Doc is right, you know, I am an irresponsible, spoiled brat who acts like a grown woman. But I've never grown up. I've never stood up and accepted the responsibilities of adulthood. I haven't learnt from my mistakes. It was not fair what I did to Hawken back then and it is not fair what I am doing to all of you now. And I see it now, Denn, I see it, but I do not know how to change it."

The tears burst forth then, unbidden and unexpected, and Calico brushed them away with the back of her hand as she finally looked at her companion. "I don't know what to do."

Denn placed her hand on her friend's in a reassuring manner as if to remind her of the bond that bound them. "Perhaps," she said, brown eyes gazing into golden, "this child you are carrying is your new Fatty."

The redhead snatched her hand away as if she had been burned, and stood up so abruptly that The Fat fell off her lap with an indignant yowl. He landed on all fours on the soft carpet, his tail twice as thick as usual, and raced off to hide under her closet.

Calico stalked over to stand in front of the great panorama window, which made up most of one wall of the captain's cabin. "I could never love this child," she declared, though less forcefully that she had four days earlier. All the time she had spent alone had left her with barely anything other to do that to think and so she had done just that. In the beginning, she had sought to reign in her thoughts, to restrain them and keep them from returning to anything that had anything to do with her current situation. But as time passed, she had realized that it was impossibility and thus she had set her thoughts free. They had taken her on a long and roundabout route, but in the end they always kept returning to her pregnancy and the future. They had turned to Ace too, but that was a subject she was not yet ready to consider, and she had twisted them away. She had realised, however, that though it still appeared inconceivable, loving her baby was not as improbable as it had initially seemed. Already, she was beginning to accept the thought of another being living and growing inside of her, and even in spite of the mess with the father and her own lack of motherly qualities, she marvelled at it all.

"Calico!" Denn's voice was sharp with sudden anger, and the young captain knew she had overstepped her boundaries. There were not many things you could not say to the brunette, but children were a sensitive subject and thus seldom broached. "Do you know what I would give to have the opportunity to be able to go through what you are experiencing right now? Do you know what I would do to be able to conceive a child, to become pregnant, to give birth and become a mother? Do you?"

The redhead knew. Denn had been running from the brothels of Thasef when she joined the crew four years ago. She had attempted to stow away onboard The Nocturne when they left Thasef Major and had been successful only so far as when she had been discovered, the island had all but disappeared behind the horizon, and there had been no way of going back. Calico had taken it all with a smile and a laugh. They had just stocked up on food and water, and, as far as the captain could judge, the slightly older woman seemed amiable. There had been an unspoken agreement that their ways would part on the next island, but on the way there, Denn had revealed herself to be witty and smart, and in the end Calico had asked her to join the crew. It had been months later and under the influence of quite a bit of alcohol, when the brunette finally revealed why she had been running.

Everyone onboard had assumed that Denn had been tired of selling her body for money, though paradoxically she did not seem averse to sleep with random men without charge. Calico had assumed it had something to do with free will and not feeling like a commodity, but what the other woman revealed had not been what she had expected.

Denn had never been loath of working in a pleasure house, she had said, she liked sex and she liked lots of it, and getting paid for her pleasure was even better. But just before she came aboard The Nocturne, she had become pregnant, and the proprietor of the establishment had demanded that she had an abortion. In the end Denn had relented because she had no other way to pay him back the debt her late father owed him, and, she had said to herself, she did not want her child to grow up anywhere near the brothel. Something went terribly wrong during the procedure, however, and the young woman had ended up sterile. It was one of the greatest injustices in the world, Calico had decided, because Denn loved children and considered it the highest privilege to become a mother.

"I know."

"Then how can you say something like that?" Denn asked incredulously, the notes of disbelief and outrage clear in her voice, "This child is your own flesh and blood, Callie, and you have given it life. You have created a miracle. How can you not love him?" There was something incredibly vulnerable about her in that moment, as if the belief system upon which she had built her entire existence had been contained within a porcelain cup that Calico had smashed into a brick wall with intentional force. Her brown eyes were wide with hurt, and the redheaded captain recognized within them a sense of betrayal, which tore at her heart in a way she would never verbally admit to.

Calico turned away, unable to look at her friend any longer and unwilling to let the other woman see how she, herself, was affected. "I should not have said that, and I'm sorry. Maybe I can love this baby," she said, not quite able to keep the bitterness out of her voice, "But even then, what could I possibly offer a child?"

The brunette had an answer ready faster than her skipper expected, and Calico had a feeling that this part was what she had come to say all along. Moreover, judging by the way her voice had softened, she had picked up on Calico's own insecurity. "You can offer love and affection," she said softly and with a certainty Calico did not feel, "you might not believe it yourself, but you are capable of loving others, Callie, as is evident by your interaction with the rest of us - and you clearly love The Fat. Things might not have ended well with Ace, but that does not make you incapable of loving others, and it does not mean you cannot love your baby. Children are precious things, and when the loss of him fades, you will realize that getting an abortion is a mistake."

The distraught redhead could not quite ignore the way her chest tightened around her lungs and for a moment denied them to expand at the sound of his name, but Denn, oblivious, continued undeterred.

"You can offer safety as well, and protection in a world that is uncertain at best. No child could have a better guardian than you and when he grows old enough, you can teach him how to defend himself with a blade and to be smart about how he goes about avoiding trouble. You can offer education and intellectual stimulation and thereby possibilities that are not open to everyone in this world. You can offer freedom, adventure, a chance to see the world." Very quietly she added, "You can offer life, Callie."

Calico knew that Denn regarded the ability to create life as the most sacred gift of all and though she had never thought of motherhood as anything but a burden, she had to admit that it was an astonishing thought that she had created another being and was carrying it around inside of her. But with such a gift came tremendous responsibilities, and she was not sure she could shoulder those.

"I have already conceded that I might learn to love this… this child, and sure, in time that love might come to overshadow the pain its father left me with. That is all good and dandy, but with me for a mother, what kind of life would I be forcing on it? I am a pirate, Denn, I am an outlaw and a murderer and a monster, and I have chosen a life on the run, a life where I discard all laws and rules but those I make myself. And while you may call that freedom, in reality it is just another kind of trap from which I can never escape. Sure, I could settle down somewhere, but with looks like mine, it would only be a matter of time before someone found out who I am or made the connection to my uncle. I have many enemies, and I dare say he has even more. And just as some might strive to use me against him, someone may attempt to use this child against me. They may attempt to punish it for my crimes or harm it in a way as to show me what I have taken from them. You say I can offer freedom, but in reality any child of mine will have a limited amount of options for a future, options that are all dictated by the choices I have made."

"You might have decided to be a pirate," Denn said, not unkindly, "but that does not mean your child will have to be one as well. My father was a drunk with a gambling addiction, but I am a free woman with none of those burdens. And just as we are not our parents, your child will not be you either."

"We are pirates," Callie retorted, "and this child would grow up onboard a pirate ship, its life would be shaped by piracy. We sail in the most dangerous waters in the world, and I cannot in good conscience expose my son or daughter to that."

"I don't understand Callie," the other woman said, her eyes almost begging for answers, "You treat this life as if it is some great misfortune, as if we are all sorry sods with nowhere else to go, but you know that you can ask anyone onboard if there is somewhere they would rather be and every one of us would tell you 'no'. It's true that this is a more dangerous line of work than most others, but it offers rewards that you do not find anywhere else. You know this."

"I know," Calico said again and a strain had crept into her voice. She felt like she was unravelling, desperately clutching at the pieces of herself and trying to hold them together. "And I know it is not impossible to leave this behind either. As long as my uncle retains his alliance with the World Government, they will pose no threat to my child. But to plan on that treaty to be everlasting is precarious at best, and I cannot stake the wellbeing of my child on such unfavourable odds. Besides, I have enemies aplenty who would stop at nothing to strike against me, and only refrain because it would mean their lives if they did. Any child of mine would be doomed to a life of being hunted for something it did not do, a life of pain and fear and paranoia, of never feeling safe on its own. And that is in a best case scenario, mind you, for if this child should inherit my curse, there will be no hiding what it is and who it is related to."

The young captain stared hard and unseeing at the rolling waves outside her window, refusing to look at the brunette who was oozing concern behind her. Threatening grey clouds blotted out the sky, and in the distance she could see the curtain of rain blurring out the border between heaven and earth, whisking away the horizon. Her fingers clenched on the windowsill, nails digging into the wood. "You say I offer life, but I offer suffering and chaos and peril as well. What I really offer is death."

"You cannot mean that, Callie," Denn said, but her captain barely heard as the memories claimed her. Denn would never understand.

**Mihawk residence, Elodea, The Grand Line  
>Aug. 23rd 2396<strong>

The polished marble floor shone in the afternoon sun, casting a pale reflection of everything back at the world, as if there was another, colourless reality beneath the cold stone. Despite the warmth of the summer day outside, there was a lingering chill to the halls of the manor and despite the vibrant colours of the bouquets, which adorned the expensive furniture, and the warm light spilling through the tall windows, the unwelcoming atmosphere was felt even here.

A young girl stood by the double doors that had recently closed on her respite from torment. She was soaking wet and dripping mud on the otherwise spotless floor. The murky water pooled by her feet, seeping out of her clothes in a way similar to how the joy of the previous hours was deserting her limbs. Her bare arms and legs were sporting a new collection of scabs and bruises, and her hair was a tangled mess in which twigs and leaves had made a home. She stood with her head bowed as if ashamed, her golden eyes cast in shadow by the bright red bangs, which fell in front of her face. In truth, however, she was attempting to conceal the defiance, which had transformed her features into a mask of obstinate rebelliousness. An expression she knew her mother would not appreciate.

The woman in question was standing on the lowest step of the broad staircase, which ascended to the upper story of the manor, almost as far away from her daughter as the width of the room allowed. Her hair was done up in elegant curls at the back of her head and the widows veil obscured her forehead and eyes. She was wearing the purple dress her brother had brought home last year, and it was beautiful. It fell perfectly around the matching jewelled slippers and was lined with lovely, hand-woven lace at the bottom of the skirt and at the ends of the wide sleeves. She too would have been beautiful if not for the look on her face. Her countenance was distorted in a very unladylike expression, disgust and hatred warring on her features as she beheld her only child.

"Where have you been?" The words were sharp, like a knife that had just had its edges honed and were forced across drawn lips. They echoed in the entrance hall like a whip crack, outlining the inhospitable emptiness, which was mistress of this house.

The girl flinched, not at the suddenness of sound after minutes spent in silence, not at the acidity and hatred carried within those words. No, she cringed at the promise they held. "I have been out," she answered with a dethatched, emotionless voice she had picked up from her uncle. She knew the way she spoke would only infuriate her mother further, but the devil in her had taken control of her vocal chord, and she could not stop herself.

The pale hand not currently resting on the banister curled into a tight fist by her mother's side and if possible became even whiter. The child thought she detected a flash of sharp green eyes from behind the veil. As expected her mother's response was even more biting than before and her voice shook when she said, "Out where?"

"All over," the child began, all insolence and audacity, before she was interrupted by a freezing reproach from the woman who had given birth to her.

"You will speak like a proper young lady, missy, or so help me God I will make you."

There was nothing in those words, which could be interpreted as a request, and at age eleven, Mihawk Calico knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what would happen if she disobeyed. She paused for a moment as if contemplating whether she should comply with the demand or not, whether she was willing to endure further punishment than what she was already in for just to infuriate her mother further. "I am sorry mother," she said then, adopting the mannerism of someone who had been instructed to correct every little thing she did wrong for years and years on end. "I have been playing with Hawken, we were by the lake –"

But the sugar coating she had laced her words with was too sweet a taste for the woman across the room, and with long strides she traversed the marble floor to grab her daughter by the arm. She progressed to tear at the wet, dirty clothes until her dress was splattered with mud, and her daughter was standing in only her underwear. Then she hauled the struggling child from the entrance hall and up the stairs to her bedroom, where she threw her down on her bed.

Calico, cat quick, attempted to escape the inevitable, but her mother had expected the manoeuvre and pinned her down on the bed while she tied her hands and feet to the bedposts. The girl screamed then, a shrill, furious sound as she tore at the straps, which bound her, but just as they had never given way before, so too they held today.

She bit into her pillow, expecting the sharp pain of the leather strap as her mother laid it across her back, but when it came her entire body still recoiled from the impact. She uttered a strangled sound, muffled by the pillow and her attempt to keep from crying out, and the place where hard leather met soft skin burned like fire.

"I will not have you associated with such vermin!" her mother snarled above her. The young girl could not help but wonder if she meant Hawken in particular or if she was simply referring to anyone below her station. She did not have long to ponder the matter though, because again the strap cracked against her back with all the fury she had provoked in the older woman, and again and again and again. Calico could no longer keep her voice under control and she screamed, loud and agonizing into her pillow, and tears spilled forth like a river.

"You are a Demon-child!" her mother spat with hatred, lifting her arm over and over again to spank her misbehaving offspring. "But I will not have you shame our family! I will not have you acting like some pig-girl! I will get the Devil out of you!"

"Monster!"

When the green-eyed woman had vented her anger she left the room and spared only a cursory glance for her daughter, a glance which held such revulsion that had she had the power, the child would have withered and died like a flower in frost.

**Onboard The Nocturne, open sea, The Grand Line  
>Jun. 14th 2407<strong>

Calico rubbed her wrists absentmindedly. She still had the scars from all the times she had torn the skin there when she had struggled against her bonds. Once, when they had explored each other's bodies and told the stories of their scars, Ace had asked where she got them, but she had refused to answer. He had not pestered her, which was one of the things she had loved about him, and had moved on to enquire about a different leftover from another hurt. She had so very many scars.

"Monster," she whispered and stared into her own golden eyes as they were reflected in the glass panes of the window. She turned her head away, ashamed.

"Callie?" Denn questioned and put a hand on her captain's shoulder.

The redhead almost jumped out of her skin. She had completely forgotten about the other woman and could barely remember what they had talked about, only vaguely recalling it had been something about the baby. "It doesn't matter," she said, "I can't do this."

"Callie?" The brunette asked again, and Calico could tell she was thoroughly puzzled by her behavior.

"Please leave Denn," she said softly.

"Callie." There was a mild exasperation in her voice, but at the moment the redhead could not bear another argument.

"Please just go."

There was an instant of hesitation, but then the pressure where Denn's hand rested disappeared and she retreated from the room, though not without watching her captain with worry as she did.

* * *

><p>Callie's mother was a disasterous parent!<p>

And, introducing The Fat :D I love cats, and especially moody, anti-social ones - I think they are funny. I picture Fatty lounging somewhere and sending death glares at everyone but his very beloved owner.

I have attempted to illustrate that Callie cannot exactly relate to her child as a person by having her calling it 'it' when she talks about it. Also, Denn, who loves children, has already given it a gender and a personality and therefore she refers to the foetus as 'he'. (Also it is easier than writing 'he or she', 'him or her' etc. all the time. It became pretty annoying after a while...)

Feel free to leave a comment, I am always happy to hear what you think about my story. Also, if you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask. I promise I don't bite ;)


	5. The Damned

So, here we go. A re-post of chapter five. I am truly sorry about the inconvenience, but the former version of this chapter was shit, and it bugged the hell out of me to leave it up! Also, rewriting it was a struggle of almost epic proportions, but now the writer's block is in the past, and I am done and as close to satisfied as I am probably going to get without editing it all over again. Which is NOT going to happen any time soon.

I am insanely busy at the moment, and I will probably continue to be for a long, long time yet. I have just started on my Master's degree, and there is a lot of work to do. So bear with me. I have most of the story planned out in my head, I just need to find the time to write it all down.

But for now, enjoy chapter five. I will hopefully have chapter six ready soon!

* * *

><p><em>I met a friend of a friend out in town<br>__She grabbed my arm and said "Girl, have you heard!"  
><em>_Told me you've fallen back in, down and out  
><em>_She'd seen you high on your knees in the dirt_

_"I don't know what he is running from," she said  
><em>_"He's so good-looking, it must be just boredom  
><em>_It was awkward to meet him, I didn't know what to say  
><em>_Well, it's none of our business anyway"  
><em>_She said "It's none of our business anyway"  
><em>_  
>- My Business, Tina Dicow<em>

**Onboard the Wanderer, open sea, The Grand Line  
>May 13th 2404<strong>

Ace woke instantly when his olfactory organs picked up the smell of frying bacon. If he wanted, he could have set his alarm clock after when the scent of breakfast being cooked would spread through the ship. Kyile was meticulous with time and the morning meal was always ready at the exact same time every morning. Ace never did set the clock though. In fact it had stood unused at his bedside since that day two years prior when the cook decided to join the Spade Pirates. No, all the alarm clock Ace needed was the one located up his nostrils with a direct connection to his brain.

He absentmindedly disentangled himself from the sleeping form next to him in bed and he sat up to survey his cabin. His head felt slightly fuzzy as if it was filled with cotton and there was a heaviness to his limbs that in no uncertain terms told him to go back to bed. His stomach overrode all protests, however, and the freckled pirate stood up to put on the same knee-length shorts he had been wearing the night before. He pulled on his black leather boots, which had landed on opposite sides of the room when he had kicked them off, not bothering to tie the laces. Finally he located his hat on the shelf where he kept his books. It had knocked over the golden statuette he used as a bookend, but the rope, which held the volumes in place, had kept them from falling down.

His memory was a fragmented, unreliable thing, and he had to admit that he had really been on a bender last night. He recalled going to the bar with his crew where, some time later, he had met her, but by then he had already been rather drunk and thus he was a bit hazy on the details. And though he had thought her to be beautiful at the time, he knew from experience that that might have been the booze talking. Shit, his crew would never let him forget that one time when he had been hitting on a dude because he had been too intoxicated to realize the man in women's clothing had not actually been a woman.

Last night had not been quite that wild, though, and he remembered that he and the red-haired woman had talked, laughed, her hand on his arm and a dazzling smile. He could not call to mind what they had talked about or how talking had progressed to a splash of red under a lamppost in the street as he caught her wrist and pushed her up against the wall to demand a kiss. There were only little flashes in between, moments of something, which could be perceived as clear-headedness, where he recalled the blurry outlines of a face, a few words or feelings, but nothing cohesive or detailed, nothing, which told him how he had lost the others or found his way home. And after, well, after there were only a sense of passion and a vague recollection of a smell like flowers and the sea.

He spared a glance at his nightly companion. He always felt the same way with the women he picked up after a night out; strangely shy as if looking at them bordered on forbidden territory. He did not know any of them and yet they had shared something so intimate. This one was still fast asleep and unaware of his eyes on her body. She was lying on her stomach with her head nestled on her arms, a mass of long, bright red hair tumbling onto the pillows and down her back. The vivid shade of those fiery strands was a clear enough statement as to why his memory focused on that colour. During the night she had kicked off the covers and her nakedness was exposed to the chilly air in his cabin. She had a narrow waist, which broadened to form a perfect curve around her hips and descended into a pair of long legs. He could see the finely toned muscles, which coiled beneath her skin, and noticed the goose bumps that were spreading over her body, raising the fine hairs to preserve what little warmth they could. Ace pulled the blankets back over her before he left, trying to get a glimpse of her features in the process. But her face was buried in the pillows and her hair concealed the rest.

With a shrug he left her to her dreams and ambled off towards the galley and a promising portion - or three - of bacon, eggs and toast, abandoning his crumbled T-shirt on the floor.

**Impel Down, Level 6  
>Late 2408<strong>

In the eerie, unsettling hush, which had fallen over the lowest level of the great gaol of the World Government like a cloak of silence, Ace could almost smell the slices of pork frying in their own fat. Yet the memory faded as a feeling of wrongness crept over him, the same feeling that had snuck into his subconsciousness and brought him back from his recollections. It took him a moment to figure it out, but when he did, the blue-eyed pirate was surprised to find that it was in fact the quiet, which he found so peculiarly disturbing even despite the fact that during most of his stay, he had longed for a respite from the perpetual noise.

Perhaps it was because it was so out of place. So far he had considered it impossible that all of the inhabitants of this wretched place would shut up at the same time. Since he had first been thrown into this cell, there had not been a minute, which passed by without someone spewing profanities at everyone and everything around. There had always been someone blabbering more or less cohesively in one language or another, someone praying to one of the many gods of men. There had always been someone who refused to acknowledge the facts of their situation, someone who fought the restrictions that marked them for what they were. A futile endeavour to be sure, because the chains, which secured the worst captive criminals in the world, did not break. And along the way, Ace supposed, he had gotten used to the racket.

But in that moment there was nothing to be heard except the shuffle of tiny feet as a rat dashed from one hide to another, and the pitter-patter of water droplets, which had condensed on the ceiling and were shattered against the floor when they fell. The loaded tension in the air was almost tangible and Ace got the distinct feeling that it was the calm before the storm, the prelude, which came before something big about to happen.

He raised his head to look at the old man with whom he shared the cell, hoping that it might give him some clue as to what was going on. Carlen always had his finger on the pulse of what was happening in the prison. The old man rarely became involved himself, however, and obviously found it more entertaining to try to predict how their fellow prisoners would react in a given situation. In the beginning, they had made a betting game out of it; trying to guess the direction a given argument or situation would progress. However, after loosing his bred ten meals in a row, Ace had learnt not to bet against his cellmate, because the older man was mostly right. Instead the young pirate had taken to study his process, and Carlen, who had suddenly found an eager apprentice, had happily assumed the role of master.

Thus it came as no surprise to Ace that his emaciated cellmate had eyes only for something outside of their cage, and that something, he guessed, was the reason behind the diversion from normalcy.

When the younger pirate did not follow his mentor's line of sight immediately, however, it was because he discovered something on the old man's face, which he had never seen before.

If conditions had been as they were in the outside world, no one would have characterized their relationship as particularly deep or expected them to be familiar with each other's expressions. In the bowels of the prison, however, there was little to occupy ones mind and, even though they had not divulged their deepest secrets to one another, Ace was more familiar with the movements of Carlen's face than any other person on the planet. He had spent the past many days studying the other man's facial muscles twitch into this grimace or that depending on his mood. And through careful study, the young man had learnt to decipher most of the micro movements of his expressions.

Today, there was something guarded in the deepening of the wrinkles at the corner of Carlen's eyes and the crease between his eyebrows. There was something, which could be perceived as fear in the tight-lipped curve of his mouth. As the blue-eyed pirate watched, the old man seemed to sigh, and on that exhalation, his expression changed to something the youngster could not decipher. Something deliberately vague.

Thoroughly puzzled, Ace turned his head to look beyond the bars of their cell, curious to discover what had caught the attention of his teacher and thereby what could have caused that impression of fear to manifest itself on his features. In addition, there was an implied relationship between the eerie silence, which had descended over Level 6, and the contractions of Carlen's facial musculature. And if Ace found the source of the former, the only reasonable conclusion was that it would give a clue to decoding the latter as well.

Arguably, Ace should not have been surprised to discover the reason behind the unusual conditions, which had taken over this part of the prison, because, logically, it was the only explanation, which made sense. That fact, however, did not stop the jolt of fear, which shot itself through his body like a razor-edged lightening strike. It did not hinder the immediate release of a dose of adrenalin, which went surging through his veins in response, or prevent his heart from lodging itself in his throat, hammering so wildly he found it difficult to breathe around it.

Surely it had not been three months yet.

Had it? It was impossible to keep track of time in this place, but still…

Shit, he was not ready to die!

Magellan, his face set in that grave amaranthine frown he carried around like a badge of pride, had a physical appearance, which would make him the ideal antagonist in every childish nightmare. His visage was so truly horrifying that, judging by looks alone, he was the perfect man to run a place, which was not wrongly described as hell on earth. Today he had in his retinue a horde of guards all dressed in spotless white uniforms. With the black leather gloves, which reached to their elbows and the pitchforks some of them carried as weapons, Ace would have thought them silly. But with their boss looming over them and the minotaurs lurking in the background, they made a damn convincing show at being intimidating.

He felt his skin crawl, felt the panic rising in the back of his throat; the bitter taste of desperation in a situation where he was utterly powerless. Shit! He had always though he would go down fighting.

"Sacarle Noat," the Chief announced solemnly, "it is time."

The world seemed to come to a complete standstill as Ace's brain digested those words, somehow unable to understand their meaning. Gradually their significance dawned on him, however, and profound sense of relief flooded his system. It soothed his frayed nerves and healed the jagged wounds the fear had gorged on his insides. It smoothed out his heart rate and removed the tension from limbs that had been ready to spring into action, to fight for survival with claws and teeth and all the strength they could muster. A sigh escaped his lips, a breath he had not been aware he had been holding. He was spared for a while yet.

And then the actual meaning of the words sank in and a new sense of horror found its way to his heart. They had come for Carlen. Carlen, who had been an almost constant source of distraction since he had rescued Ace from being swallowed by the madness, which had initially claimed him. Carlen, who had patiently, persistently been the one to drag the freckled pirate away from the gaping hole of despair that had driven him to the edges of his sanity when the memories and the guilt over what he had done came rushing back.

It was not hard to guess what would happen to the old man once they took him from this cage. The prisoners of Impel Down, and most certainly those on Level 6, only ever left their cells for one reason. Granted, there were the occasional escapee from the floors above; fools, who thought they could evade the monstrosities, which roamed the upper Levels, or dodge the pitfalls that would bring them deeper into Hell. People who actually thought they could escape. But there was only one way of getting out of this place. And that was through the doors of death.

Prisoners on the upper Levels died of thirst, they died of hunger or of cold, they died of blood loss, of fighting. There were multitudes of means by which they could, and at some point would, meet their respective ends. But on Level 6 things were altogether different. Here the prisoners were restrained at all times, bound in seastone shackles, which impaired most, if not all, movement. They were fed regularly, not enough to completely satisfy, but enough to keep them alive. Here there was only one way to go: execution.

In all honesty, Ace had never given much consideration to the fate of the other prisoners and had not concerned himself with their fate. It had always been implicit in the back of his mind that he was the one with the most imminent threat to his life. He would like to believe that the single-minded focus on his own troubles had been based on a subconscious idea that, because his stay here would be so short, they would not have time to off someone before his time was up. But now he wondered if it had been out of selfishness that he had never thought about when his fellow prisoners were scheduled to die. And the answer, he feared, would remain elusive for the remainder of his life - however short it was.

Still, consideration or no, not even in his wildest dreams would he have imagined they would come for Carlen. The old man had become a constant in Ace's world, much like the movement of the sun or the flow of the tide. He had been here for a while, the young man had gathered from his stories, and nothing in his behaviour had indicated that he had known what was coming.

But now they were here, and Ace found himself shocked to the core. He could not escape the feeling of dread, which had settled on him, and some part of him wondered if it was because he was dismayed by Carlen's situation or if it was the possible consequences for the preservation of his own mental faculties, which left him consternated. Because what would happen to Ace once the memories and the guilt came back around and Carlen was not there to help him? Would Magellan have to present a prisoner who had gone off the rocker to the Marines? The prospect almost made him smile.

Carlen seemed resigned as one of the Chief Warden's lackeys unlocked the door to the cell and freed his chains from the wall. He was even smiling, Ace noticed, if only a half-smile, as if he was glad his ordeal was finally over. Ace could not blame him; he too sometimes wished he could just get it over with. But then again. Ace did not really want to die.

A few moments later, Carlen was walked out of the cell, surrounded by the guards, and the freckled pirate felt a panic rising. What do you say to a dead man before he dies? What words do you use as a final goodbye to a friend – and Carlen was a friend, he discovered – you hardly knew, who had saved your sanity and possibly your life? Because you had to say something. Right?

They started walking, and the panic lurched to a new height.

"Thank you!" Ace finally blurted. Lame? He didn't know, but it was better than 'bye'. 'Bye' would have sounded abysmally stupid. And 'see ya soon' would have been too morbid since Ace could see nothing funny about the situation.

The old man glanced back over his shoulder and inclined his head to the youngster. "Don't waste it," he said with a lopsided grin. He did not look back again, but with his head held high and his back straight he did not look like a dead man walking.

"I won't," Ace called, automatically more than anything really, because he had no clear idea what the old bastard meant. Don't waste what? His life? As far as anyone was concerned it was already wasted, and what little he had left, he could hardly do anything but waste. He could have meant reading expressions? It did not seem likely, however, because there was nothing important to gain in this place anyway. No, the only thing that he could have meant was Ace's sanity – though anyone knew it would be easier to walk to the scaffold if you were lost to the world. It would be a failure on a par with suicide, however, and if he had a choice, Ace knew he could not do it. No matter how much easier it made everything. No matter how much it would spite the World Government.

Of course, Carlen could have said it just to try to convince Magellan and through him the leaders of the world that he had known something they did not. Something he had shared with Ace.

The old man had shared nothing with Ace really. A few stories, some lessons about the predictability of people and how to read their behaviour. It was not like he had told the freckled pirate how to read poneglyphs, how to break into Mariejoa undetected or how to get to Raftel. The chief had called him Noat, though. Sacarle Noat. And if that was his real name, then it was not unlikely the bastard had known things. A lot of things.

Sacarle Noat had already been a legend when Ace was a child. A man of many talents, he had sailed with the late King of Pirates and after he had seen his captain publicly beheaded, he had formed his own crew and returned to the New World. Seven years later, the then Vice Admiral of Marine Headquarters, Aokiji, had brought down the curtain on the adventure. Their fight, which could only be described as a clash of titans, had been on the lips of everyone, and Ace and Sabo had stolen newspapers to follow the story, and Noat's his wanted poster to the trunk of the tree where they usually hung out. Even years later, when Luffy had joined their gang, they had taken turns to be either one or the other part of that fight, though who got to be pirate and who had to assume the role of marine had always been a source of much arguing.

There was no denying that the seventeen years in prison had changed his childhood hero; his hair had become white and brittle, and his bulk had been reduced to an enervated shell, eyes sunken into their sockets. It was as if the years had stolen everything but his skin and his bones and the light in those deep-set eyes. Ace had never recognized him, and if the chief Warden had not revealed his name, the young man would probably never have known that he had shared a cell with one of his father's crew.

Ace glanced towards the stairwell where Carlen and his guards had disappeared, but the light from their torches was nothing more than a memory and any echoes of their footfalls were lost in the din that had returned with the departure of the Chief Warden. No matter how much he wanted to, Ace could not quite dispel the feeling of loss, which rose inside of him. And not just at the loss of an interesting cellmate.

The remnants of Roger's crew, his father's crew, were far apart and hard as fuck to find. Ace would readily concede that he had never made any effort to try to unearth them, but he felt cheated knowing that he has spent the past – how long had it been? – with a man who could have given him answers. And he was, quite frankly, rather angry as well.

There were so many questions Ace, a life-long orphan, wanted an answer to. He had attempted to deny it when he was younger and the anger had simmered closer to the surface, but hiding your innermost longings from yourself would leave you vulnerable should anyone else discover what they were. So Ace had opted to accept his thirst for answers, he had studied them, and then he had concluded that they were not something he cared enough about to spend his life searching for. He controlled his cravings, not the other way around. And that was it. End of story.

However, current circumstances had made him aware of just how massive that self-deception had been, and he realized with quite a shock that he _did _care. He _wanted_ those answers. And they had been right in front of him. Carlen had known Gol D. Roger first hand, personally, intimately. His opinion might have been tainted by years, but not by propaganda or animosity or ignorance. He would have been a much better source than any other person Ace had ever been in contact with.

The young pirate knew next to nothing about the man who sired him. For a while he had put stock in the general belief, but as time passed, he came to understand that he could not trust public opinion. Regular people believed what they heard. They believed the propaganda and the scary stories about his crimes, his desires, his personality. The great majority did not even know his name, but referred to him as "Gold" Roger. And the stories travelled from mouth to mouth, and they grew more and more unlikely each time. Nonetheless, when everything had been blow completely out of proportion, the fact remained that none of those who cried out the loudest had known the Pirate King, and those who had known him, knew better than to contradict the World Government. And thus the truth remained elusive.

Carlen had known who Ace was. How could he not? Ace knew from experience how difficult it was to hide a relationship with a non-crewmember, and the love affair between his parents had been more than just a passing affiliation. Hadn't it? It had to have been. Why else would his mother have done what she did? Why else would his father have asked Gramps to take care of him? But truth be told, Ace knew painfully little about his parents and the circumstances of his conception.

The idea of fatherhood had always been far from Ace's mind, but the few times it had rummaged around inside his skull, he had always concluded that it would be a cruelty to put a child of his into the world. Ace had been a criminal from the moment he had been conceived, a devil by extension, and doomed to be hunted and hated by anyone who knew of his paternity. There was no reason to believe it would be any different for a son or a daughter of his, because no matter how little Ace wanted to do with the his father, he had the blood of the greatest criminal the world had ever seen running through his veins, and no matter the circumstances, any children of his would carry that same curse.

Had his parents thought of that? Had they even considered the implications before it was too late? Or had it only occurred to them when Roger had been captured? When the deed was done, the options had been limited, but Ace's mother had proved her love to her son, she had given her life to keep him safe in her womb.

In recent years, Ace had discovered that he would actually love to become a father. Even here, in this bleak hole he felt the acute longing to hold a babe in his arms and know that he had taken part in the creation of something so unique, so precious. To watch such a child grow, to teach him or her the things Ace had once taught his brother – it would be nothing short of a miracle. He would shower the kid in affection and give it all the things he had never had while growing up, things he did not know had been lacking until he found Pops and the crew. But there was no way he could father a child in good conscience. Not when he was aware of the consequences.

It was an impossibility. Damn him if he did not know that already. When he had been free, there had been no room in his life for children. Even without the curse of his bloodline, Ace was a notorious pirate, and a pirate ship had never been a place to raise a child. It was a dangerous, rough life onboard a vessel like that; you never knew when a storm might sweep in, never knew when a rivalling band of brigands might fall upon you or if you were gong to be assaulted by the Marines.

Before, it had been an unattainable dream, a Fata Morgana of the Alabastian desert, a wish for a future that would most likely never exist. And it had started with a night of binge drinking and an encounter with a red-headed woman, which had been anything but planned.

**Onboard the Wanderer, open sea, The Grand Line  
>May 13th 2404<strong>

Breakfast progressed as it usually did among the Spade Pirates and Ace managed to only fall asleep once. That stunt, however, left him with bacon grease in his eyebrows and a shallow cut on his chin where a knife had been in the way when his head hit the table.

He was just about finished with his second helping when Denison suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence, eyes turned to saucers and fork forgotten halfway to his mouth. Moments later the faces of the others on the same side of the table mirrored Deni's own, and Ace realised they were all staring at the same spot behind his back. He turned around to get a look at what was so shocking and came face to face with the redheaded woman who had been sleeping so soundly in his bed ten minutes prior. He felt his jaw muscles go slack and it was a minute or so before he remembered how to operate them.

She had pulled her startling hair back in a ponytail and revealed a feminine albeit slightly feline face with high cheekbones, a straight, narrow nose and lips that curved invitingly. Her eyes were what demanded his immediate attention however as they surveyed the men gathered before her. They were a mix between bright yellow and molten gold, piercing like those of a bird-of-prey: the eyes of a demon.

He had never seen eyes like that, and at first they transfixed him, held him captivated in a grip that was both fascinating and frightening at the same time, and he was unable to look away. Yet Ace knew better than anyone not to judge a book by its cover and when he recovered from the shock, he knew that he would not treat her with anything but the same courtesy he showed anyone else unless they proved to have ill intentions. So he examined her with the same measuring gaze as she had fixed upon him and his crew.

He could read nothing from her face, no emotion flickered in those predator-eyes, but his instincts distinctly told him that this woman was dangerous. And that was when he took a look at the rest of her. He could tell she had been through his dresser, because she was wearing one of his seldom-used shirts. It was much too big for her, however, and reached to about mid-thigh. She had rolled the sleeves up to her elbows, and had put a belt around her waist to keep it tight to her body. It hinted at the slender, finely shaped figure he had appreciated earlier. Below the shirt her legs stuck out, bare, except for the soft shoes she had on her feet. Her hand was resting on the hilt of one of the two swords, which were securely fastened to the belt, thumb pushing the cross guard up just enough to reveal a sliver of the shiny steel of the blade.

"Good morning," she said, her voice neutral, neither threatening nor friendly.

She received no response, however, as the Spade Pirates were still busy staring. A flicker of annoyance flittered across her face, the first emotion Ace had seen from her since the previous night, but a moment later it was gone, reabsorbed by that expressionlessness, which gave away nothing of the inner workings of her mind. He put his hand on the long dagger he carried by his hip, ready to move in case she should make good of the ill-hidden threat.

"Tell me," she demanded in a voice that seemed as if she was used to giving orders and being obeyed, "which one of you morons is responsible for kidnapping me?"

Collectively the heads of the crew turned to Ace. And so, in response, did the lustrous eyes of the woman who had shared his bed.

"What?!" He exclaimed in his own defence, "No way! I didn't kidnap anybody! We are not even sailing."

"Uhm, Captain," Denison mumbled behind him, obviously ill at ease with the situation, "you gave the order last night that we set out at dawn. That was almost two hours ago."

Ace felt the ability to control his jaw muscles slip from his grasp a second time as he gaped at his first mate. This could not seriously be happening! "And you didn't check my cabin to see if my… well, if she… if my…" He shot a glance at the redhead by the door. She had raised an eyebrow and it curved towards her hairline in a way that suggested he was skating on thin ice. "If my _companion_ had left?"

"Why in the world would we do that?" Deni retorted seeming just as intent on pushing the blame away as Ace was. "None of us knew you'd brought a woman back with you. We didn't even know where you went last night! We just heard you snoring in your cabin this morning and figured you had made it back in one piece."

"No," Ace shot back, " I distinctly remember running into Carlis when we came onboard." And he did. Just then the image of the burly Southerner as he grinned and slapped Ace on the back while nodding toward his captain's companion, had returned to his mind.

"Well, in that case he didn't tell any of us."

Ace sighed with exasperation and turned back to the woman. He had every intention of offering his deepest, sincerest apologies, but before he got the chance, the redhead burst out laughing. The change in the atmosphere was remarkable and even if the others had not seen her hand on her sword, the tension had not gone unnoticed. It had shifted, he realized, when he struggled to find a term that was fitting for her without being offensive. Slowly, his crew joined her, and Ace flushed with embarrassment. But he could not deny the ridiculousness of the situation and it was not long before he too was laughing.

When the mirth died, Kyile stood from his place at the table, "Would you join us?" he asked and offered her his seat like a proper gentleman. Ace could have slapped himself because he had not thought of it first.

"Thank you," she said as she used the sleeve of Ace's shirt to dap the tears of merriment away.

Kyile pulled up a chair from the pantry, and Ace was acutely aware that the woman he had slept with suddenly took up the spot beside him. He had never eaten breakfast with one of his one-night-stands before. Hell, he had barely held a casual conversation with one of the opposite sex unless he was under the influence of alcohol. He had no idea how to behave around her - which, apparently, was exactly what Kyile had anticipated.

"So Captain," the cook asked when their guest had been given a clean plate, cutlery and a glass, cheeky grin in place and eyes sparkling with thinly veiled amusement, "why don't you introduce us to your friend?"

Ace flushed again and scowled viciously at the cook while his crew chuckled around them. They were a bunch of assholes, he decided. With a mental sigh and a deep breath before he bit the bullet, the freckled pirate turned to face the only female onboard the ship. "I'm sorry miss," he said apologetically and felt his cheeks burn with the blood that had rushed to his face. "I don't remember your name."

She gave him a week, sympathetic smile. "Don't worry about it," she said, "I am Calico. You are… Blaze – right?"

"Close. My name is Ace."

"Well, it's nice to meet you," she said and held out a slender hand for him to shake. When he did, he was surprised at the sure grip and the calloused skin of her palm. All the women he had shook hands with so far had all had soft, velvety fingers. He glanced at the swords at her hip and concluded that they were not just for show.

The men around the table introduced themselves, some shook her hand and some stood and bowed to her. All of a sudden they were the pictures of politeness and gone was every trace of the rowdy bunch of rascals, which usually took up the seats around the dining table.

Calico smiled at each of them as she said hello, and Ace had to admit that she took her accidental kidnapping in stride. He was not sure he would have been quite as level-headed if he had been the only woman among a group of strange men, let alone if he would be stuck with them against his will for however long it took to reach the next island.

"I'm sorry about before," she confessed with a half-smile when all the introductions had been made, "you never know what to expect when you wake up and realize you are not where you ought to be. You might have been a rapists or slavers for all I knew."

"Don't worry about it," Ace recycled her words from before, wondering what she meant about slavers.

"Yeah," Deni chimed in, "I would probably have killed the lot of us if I had been you."

"Don't be ridiculous," Kyile admonished, "you would have run screaming from the room and hid in the cargo hold."

Another round of laughter followed, and Ace realized that this mysterious creature, who ate like a lady and laughed so easily even though she might never see her home again, could become his friend.

* * *

><p>Author's note:<p>

How Ace met Calico. Interesting… And perhaps too cliché? But I figure they need time to get to know each other and what better way to do that than an accidental kidnapping? As of yet he does not know she is a pirate captain and assumes he has stolen a girl from a home she may never return to. Poor Ace. He is completely stressed out.

I have no clue about the name of the Spade Pirates' ship, but for now this will suffice. If you have a better idea, please let me know. (Other names considered: Queen of Hearts (but then I associate heart with the Heart Pirates), Sabo´s Adventure, Spirit of Adventure (but that has already been used in Up), Jolly Molly

There are aspects of Ace's feelings towards his parents, that I will leave for his encounter with Garp.


	6. Path of Shadows

Hey guys, I am sorry for the long wait and everything. I am still incredibly busy with my studies, and there is so much to do - it is a little overwhelming at times.

I don't know when I will have the time to write again, or the inspiration (outside of when I should be cramming for exams), to continue this story, so I apologize beforehand for what will probably be another long wait.

* * *

><p><em>I used the deadwood to make the fire rise<em>  
><em>The blood of innocence burning in the skies<em>  
><em>I filled my cup with the rising of the sea<em>  
><em>And poured it out in an ocean of debris<em>

_I'm swimming in the smoke_  
><em>Of bridges I have burned<em>  
><em>So don't apologize<em>  
><em>I'm losing what I don't deserve<em>

_-Burning In The Skies, Linkin Park_

* * *

><p><strong>Off the coast of Elodea, The Grand Line<br>Jan. 15****th**** 2400**

A roar, much akin to that of some monstrous beast, rang out behind her, a sound so loud it could be felt as it passed through her: a reverberation in the cavity of her lungs, an agonizing pressure on the tympanic membranes in her ears. She cried out in pain as one of them ruptured, and, a moment later, in surprise when she was knocked her over and she fell to the deck of the small ship she and Hawken had commandeered in the harbour.

She could not help the disorientation, which welled over her as she tried to get her eyes to focus on the tarred planks in front of her nose, but for some reason her sight refused to obey. Her ears were ringing and every time she swallowed there was a stinging sensation in her left auditory canal as if someone was driving needles into her skull. She wiped her hand over her left cheek to abate the tickling feeling that, despite all the other things, which were going on, refused to be ignored. When her hand came away bloody, was when she started to worry.

So she went through the routine check-up. She wiggled her toes, then her ankles and her legs, and continued the same procedure with her arms. She concluded there was no nerve damage as all her body parts seemed to be under her control, there were no broken bones in any of her extremities and, from what she could tell by the absence of pain, no damage to any of her vital organs either. In fact all that was wrong with her, aside from her ear, was a pair of bruised knees, an abrasion on the front of her right shoulder and along that same collarbone, and a scrape on her chin from when she had skidded across the deck.

During the time it had taken her to reach that deduction her eyes had stopped swimming and she looked around in the attempt to get a hold on what had happened. Hawken was sprawled out near the mast, blood welling from a broken nose and a nasty scratch across the right side of his face. He was speaking to her, but no sound came out. She tried to tell him, but for the first time in her life, she could not hear the words reverberating inside her skull as her tongue formed them and her vocal cord brought them to life. All she could hear was that insistent high-pitched tone, which was still in her ears.

She was pushing herself up into a sitting position when something struck her hand, and she yelped in pain and surprise. A pebble rolled away from the point of impact and came to rest on the black wooden boards a few feet from where it struck. A moment later something else hit her in the back of the head and she discovered that all kinds of miniature missiles were bombarding her newly appropriated vessel. There was only one place where they could have come from, and she turned around to face the explosion's point of origin.

Her brain could not quite comprehend the horror of what was unfolding before her eyes. It registered the images that her optic nerves recorded, but none of them made any sense.

A moment ago Elodea, the island of her birth, the only place in the whole world she knew, had been the image of peace and idyll. It had been green and lush and fertile, with that perfect small-town feel as if it had enough in itself and did not care for the troubles of the outside world. But now, now it was unequivocally the worst sight she had seen in the fifteen years of her life, worse than the blistered, bleeding body of Tanner Serh, when he had been dragged from his burning home, worse than the bloated corpses she and Hawken had once found on the beach.

She felt as if she was having a nightmare. Surely she had to be having a nightmare.

But no, her senses told her. The cloud of dust and smoke, which billowed around the island, was not the figment of a dream, and neither was the raging inferno behind it. She could not write the uncanny shade of the smoke off as an image her subconscious mind had conjured up to scare her, could not deny the vivid reds, oranges, yellows, which clashed with black and grey to form an abstract, awful work of art in the sky above the island.

A gust of wind blew the obscuring smoke away, and suddenly she was staring at the burning wasteland, which was all that was left of her former home. Half the island had already sunken to the depths of black oblivion and, as she watched, powerless, helpless, more pieces of land broke free and were swallowed by the hungry waves of the ocean. The two towns and all the villages had been erased from the surface of the planet, the forests had been flattened by the force of the explosion and the flames were devouring everything that could still burn. She could not hear the roar of the fire, and, later, she would bless herself lucky that the blast had rendered her deaf, because she could not hear the screams of any who might have been burning to death if any of her countrymen were still alive at this point. She could only wish she had been temporarily blinded as well.

The debris, which could not sink, floated on the water around what was left of Elodea, an unsorted mess of irregular sized items and blackened wreckage. In varying states of charred and broken, she could not find it within herself to try to distinguish what had once been a chair, from what might have been the baker or the butcher's son.

The shower of dirt and pebbles, which had rained down on the small vessel was dwindling and ash was drifting down from where it had been blown into the atmosphere. It settled like snow of the waves and in her hair and she could not help the acrid taste in the back of her throat at the thought that it might be all that was left of a person she had known. Perhaps, she thought with bitter morbidity, it was her mother's last act of spite.

The shock wave had broken the ropes, which held the sail in place, though luckily the sail had remained largely undamaged. But until she and Hawken replaced them, they were going nowhere fast, and neither of them seemed able to tear their sights away as Elodea drew its last breath. The stolen vessel drifted further from what was once a shore and Calico found herself unable to cry. Even when the sea swallowed the last bit of the island, she still did not shed a tear. Everything and everyone she had ever known had disappeared in a matter of minutes and she remained as unmoving and expressionless as the day her mother first called her a monster.

It was because her new reality had not settled on her, she knew, the horrible crime she had just committed had not had the time to sink in. Later she would cry her eyes out, she woved. Later, she would show that she was as much human as they swore she was not. Later.

**Onboard The Nocturne, open sea, The Grand Line  
>Jun. 21<strong>**st**** 2407**

Calico woke up at an unearthly hour bathed in cold sweat and with a heartbeat far exceeding that of a normal resting person. At first she was unable to breathe properly, partly because the nightmare still had its claws in her and partly because of the humidity that assaulted her the moment she returned to consciousness. She felt clammy and hot, and knew that she would not be going back to sleep anytime soon. Instead she dressed and left the confines of her cabin to find a respite from the closeness.

Outside the new day was drawing its first breath, brightening the world in that greying, ephemeral hour where everything seemed the figments of dreams. They young captain could make out the black outlines of her ship against the brightening sky; the rigging an intangible ladder to the heavens, the crow's nest a black smudge against the clouds.

Ikara, who had the wheel that night, called a greeting that went only half-heard and was acknowledged by an absentminded wave in return. A familiar sense of emptiness had taken a hold of the captain as she drifted towards the prow, where the breeze, the forward motion of the Nocturne created, was most potent. It was the same emptiness, which always followed the nightmare, the acute knowledge that even though she regretted the destruction of her homeland, there had not been a single person on that island who's death she mourned. It was the knowledge that seven years later she had yet to fulfil her promise.

An hour dragged itself past, agonizingly slow as the horizon brightened and she watched the pale dawn creep over the world in a spectacularly unspectacular progression from near-black to a deep blue-grey colour. The sky had threatened rain since the day before, but as it was, it had yet to make good of that promise.

The grey clouds had greeted them the previous afternoon, a dubious welcome from the island they were closing in upon. Something in the air had thrown Kaname into a fit of fretting and calculating and fretting some more, and while the air pressure had dropped and the temperature risen, he had given his estimate that they would most likely reach Evergreen Kingdom before the storm broke.

Calico considered herself a descent navigator. It was not difficult to follow a logpose as long as you remembered to check its position at regular intervals – even if she could not account for the eventual whirlpool or the seemingly random currents in certain places. When outside the Grand Line, she could even operate a compass and sextant, or plot a course from the position of the sun and stars. Yet while those were skills that could be learnt fairly easily, Kaname had an ability, which made him a phenomenal nautical navigator. He seemed to be instinctively attuned to the weather, as if his body felt even the slightest changes in air pressure and temperature, and by that he was able to predict the movements of the sea currents, changes in wind speed and even when it would rain. The young pirate captain was certain that this innate sensitivity was something only a handful of people worldwide possessed.

The rest of the crew had not known of the threatening tempest until just before twilight when the wind had died and their sails slackened. That the wind speed dropped from one moment to another was not an entirely unusual phenomenon on the Grand Line, but in this case it alerted everyone to the oppressiveness of the atmosphere, which had been increasing steadily for hours. And then Kaname had proved his worth yet again by guiding them to a passage of wind, which propelled them towards their destination with a decent speed. It was times like those that everyone forgave his jumpy character and his peculiar attitude, because no one wanted to row the rest of the way, and no one wanted to be caught in open seas during a storm.

After sunrise Hawken joined her with a cup of steaming tea and a basket of freshly baked scones. For a while they stood in companionable silence while seagulls played above the waters and unknowingly heralded the proximity of an island that was still hidden behind the edge of the horizon. Behind them the "goodnights" of the night watch rang out and the "good mornings" of the day watch greeted them from the stairs that led below decks.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Hawken asked her after some time. There was no condemnation in his enquiry, and she could tell he was not questioning her decision either. Rather he was making sure she had thought things through and was not about to do something she would regret later on.

She did not look at him, did not have to, and, perhaps, some small part of her did not want to either. She knew why he asked, knew that he knew how she sometimes let anger overshadow her judgement and made rash choices she usually ended up wishing she had not made.

"I am sure," she said firmly, because although she was angry at Ace, at the Fates, at the world and at the baby for being there, unwanted in her womb, she had spent enough time on her own lately, unable to fend off the most pressing matter on her mind (even if she had persistently tried), and she had looked beyond that anger. And from that, one blaringly obvious fact had emerged to shine brightly in the darkness before her: allowing the child to be born would be the worst thing she could ever do to it.

"You are not your mother," he said quietly, but with a certainty that might as well have been moulded from molten rock and left for the world to see for eons to come.

She sighed. She should have expected Hawken to bypass all the crap and the half-truths she could feed to other people and cut straight to the heart of the matter. He always had and, she suspected, always would see right through her as if she was as transparent as glass. She should have known he would hear all the things she left unsaid.

She supposed it was an understanding born from years of companionship and the formation of a bond that ran deeper and stronger than blood, but though he seemed to read her like an open book, the same was not true in the reverse. She could not look at his face and discern every emotion there and the reasons behind them. She had known him for so long that she recognised the small changes, which betrayed his general state of mind, and she knew him well enough to guess most of what lay behind. Still, she could not see through the layers as easily as he did, could not look at him and just know the right things to say. But Hawken was clever with people and had an instinctive understanding of the workings of the human mind or an inborn ability to read body language or some other aptitude, which allowed him to connect and comprehend on a deeper level than any she could ever hope to achieve. He was like Kaname that way; born with a gift few others shared.

Hawken knew her deepest fears, as she knew his, and somehow he had known that it was this fear, and not her anger, which had led her to take the first steps down the path she had chosen. What he did not know was that although Calico had skirted around it ever since it had first manifested itself inside her chest, too afraid of what she might find to study it in detail, she had confronted that concern as well. It had not been because she had felt any desire to do so, but rather because she knew that whichever way the scales tipped would have enormous influence on the life of her unborn child.

"No," she acknowledged and left the rest of the sentence to hang unsaid on her next exhalation.

Judging by his sharp look in her direction he had once again picked up on the things she had not said, things that lay implicit in that one word. "Callie!" he exclaimed, exasperation, impatience and shock warring in his voice.

"Don't argue," she told him flatly, tiredly, "it won't change anything."

And Hawken, of course, did not listen.

Hawken could say what he wanted, though. He could disagree from here to the end of the world, but he was not omnipresent, he was not God. He was only human, and as such he was bound to be biased - and especially about personal matters. He could not judge her without prejudice because he was her friend, and their bond indisputably made him overlook at least some of her flaws. Besides, what friendship could last if one part thought of the other as a monster?

So Calico let him talk, she let him rant and argue to his hearts contend, and while her heart warmed by his words and convictions, her mind remained as resolved as ever.

**Rainy Town, Evergreen Kingdom, the Grand Line  
>Jun. 21<strong>**st**** 2407**

Hours after Hawken had pushed off from where he had been leaning against the railing and had ended his monologue The Nocturne glided through the murky waters of Rainy Town's harbour. The clouds had thickened and the world seemed cast in premature dusk.

Calico still stood in the prow of her ship, but the reduced speed, which resulted from her crew's effort to manoeuvre the vessel into place at the quay, no longer served to stave off the oppressive weather.

It was not their first time in Rainy Town and, the redhead assumed, neither would it be their last. Still, no matter how many times she saw the place, it's peculiar structures never failed to amaze. All the buildings were constructed entirely out of stone and roofed with dark slate, but even in the untimely twilight, the craftsmanship that had went into constructing each of them did not go unnoticed. It was not the houses, however that commanded your immediate attention when you arrived, but the characteristic structures, which spanned the spaces between the buildings. Because every street was raised above the ground on stone supports and covered with wooden planks to keep the inhabitants feet from getting wet and muddy, and they were roofed over by a wirework of intricate steel constructions with every gap and hole between them covered with panes of glass, to ensure dry passage between destinations. The coverage was designed to lead the rainwater towards a number of pipes, which drained into an underground network of tunnels and eventually led the excess water into the sea.

Rainy Town had not earned its name for nothing. Evergreen Kingdom was probably the place in the whole world where there fell the most precipitation, and since it was the country's larges port, most people who came to the island, came to this very place. Once the city had had another name, but as time passed, people had adopted the popular sailor's slang and eventually the city council had given in to popularity and changed the name to its current form.

Calico beheld their destination as the Nocturne closed in on her mooring space, confident that her crew knew what they were doing and had no immediate need of her instructions. She had once been fortunate enough to see Rainy Town in sunlight, which was in fact a rare delight, and she had realized the appropriateness of its other nickname. Because in the sun the millions of differently angled glass panes had sparkled like diamonds and the Crystal City had lit up from within in a dazzling display of light. Even in this weather the settlement held an undeniable beauty as the lamps illuminated the inside of the covered streets and their warm glow reflected on the glass to create an ethereal, inviting atmosphere.

When the last of the mooring lines were secured to the bollards, Calico gave Salen and Bol orders to continue watching the ship and granted everybody else leave to do as they pleased. With no further ado, she disembarked and went in search of a medical facility with a reasonable doctor who was willing to let go of his own ego and do as his patients asked. She could not help but notice Hawken's watchful worry and Denn's venomous glare on her neck as she walked down the gangplank.

The buxom brunette had not spoken to her since their encounter in the captain's cabin a week prior although Calico, fed up with being scooped up indoors and almost desperate to get some training done, had left her private quarters the day after. The willowy redhead had kept mostly to herself though; caught up in her own thoughts, and her friends had left her alone.

Calico strode across the paved expanse between the quay and the glass covered streets. As she ascended the stairs a violent gust of wind slammed into her back and a moment later a light drizzle picked up. In the short time it took her to get up the rest of the stairs and under the sheltering construction, it had turned into the kind of downpour Rainy Town was renowned for. She moved away from the opening and deeper into the city as a lightning split the sky overhead, momentarily banishing all shadows in a bright, white flash. She did not pay much heed to the weather though, as she searched for a local, who might give her directions to the doctor. Most of the foreign visitors were clearly distinguished by their upturned faces and frequent exclamations of wonder as another lightning briefly blazed to life just to disappear again a second later. The natives, however, were accustomed to such displays and their casual disregard for the raging of the elements left no doubt as to their origin. It was not difficult for Calico to identify one such woman.

Armed with a thorough set of directions to what was allegedly the best doctor in town, the young pirate weaved her way between unflappable inhabitants and gawking tourists until she found the white door that had been described to her. The door was adorned with a bronze plaque, which proclaimed that Doctor Abre Nettlese received patients between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., and that everyone was welcome.

The redheaded captain pressed down the handle, and resolutely entered a waiting area adorned with two coffee tables and an assortment of chairs aligned along the walls. She gave her name to the secretary, received a number, and took a seat with one of today's newspapers.

She had made a habit of reading the paper every morning, but the unfortunate circumstances of the past few months had left her uncommonly negligent on that front. Therefore she was surprised to read that there had been an incident on one of the first islands of the Grand Line, where a rampaging green-haired swordsman had killed a rather large number of bounty hunters. There had been some wild rumours in circulation as none of the survivors had been particularly happy to divulge exactly who the culprit was, but it had been established that the man was Roronoa Zoro of the Strawhat Pirates.

The name of that crew left a bitter taste on her tongue as she recalled that day when she had shown Ace his brother's first wanted poster, the same day where the child she was going to have removed had been conceived. She would not think of Ace though, so she banished his charming, freckled face from her thoughts and returned to the paper.

The victims had not been very forthcoming as to why so many mercenaries had been congregating on that island either. The author of the article, however, presented what mostly appeared to be a conspiracy theory, and marked them as members of the elusive Baroque Works; sent there to prey on newbie pirates as they emerged from the Blues. Although he was not able to present any evidence, there was something about it, which set little warning bells ringing in her head. Only gossip had reached this far into the waters of the New World, but since she had first heard about them two years ago, the reports had only grown more disturbing. There was a limit to how much credit one could afford such things, however, and Calico was not of a habit to believe everything she heard.

Another report made mention of a rookie pirate crew that was burning its way through its first string of islands on the Grand Line, and left behind a trail of death and destruction on par with Malhollo the Dread. Survivors' statements marked them as a ghastly bunch led by a red-haired devil with a taste for carnage. In the article figured a picture of the smouldering ruin of a city and the wanted poster of one Eustass 'Captain' Kidd. The young woman stared at her fellow redhead and wondered if that demonic streak they shared could be attributed to hair colour or if it was something else, which was to blame. He certainly looked the part, she had to give him that, with his maniacal smirk and those piercing eyes he made no attempt at masking the cruelty upon his face.

Her name was called, and Calico was glad for the distraction. She did not like to be reminded of what she was.

The doctor was a tall, spindly creature with a pair of thick glasses that enlarged his eyes and made him look like a peculiarly mix between a man and a nocturnal animal.

"Hello miss," he greeted her and shook her hand politely. "What can I do for you?"

She plopped into a chair beside his desk and explained to him the details of her condition. She let him know that she had thought long and hard about whether she should keep the baby or not.

"An abortion, you say," he said, scratched his chin and sent a pointed look in the direction of her stomach. "And I can hear you have thought it through as well. How far along are you?"

"About eight weeks," she answered.

"You are in luck then," the doctor declared. "Since it's so early in the pregnancy, all that is required to terminate it is the ingestion of a simple pharmaceutical. All you have to do is swallow a pill and the rest will take care of itself."

"Perfect," she told him.

"First, however, I will have to perform a gynaecological examination to inspect the size of the uterus and ensure that you do not have any sexual diseases."

So Calico dropped her pants, lay down on the examination couch and let him do his business.

When doctor Abre was satisfied, the young woman donned her clothing and reclaimed her seat by his desk. The man had bustled off to an adjoining room that, as far as she could tell from where she sat, held all his equipment as well as an assortment of pharmaceuticals through which he was currently rummaging. She heard an exclamation of joy, and soon after the bespectacled creature emerged carrying a small plastic container.

"I will give you some privacy, miss" Abre said and headed for the door to the waiting area. "If you would follow me." He led her through another door, behind which was a short corridor, and motioned her into one of the small rooms, which abutted it. "When you are done, please go back to the waiting area and wait for me to check up on you. It is unlikely anything will happen, but since I am not your regular doctor, and thus am unfamiliar with your medical history, I want to make sure you do not have an allergic reaction to the drugs."

The redhead nodded numbly as he placed the container with the pills on the table, poured her a glass of water and then made to leave.

"Take your time, miss," he said. "There is no rush."

Calico plopped into the chair, but had yet to make a move for the pills. They lay so innocently on that plastic tray. It was almost inconceivable that two so small capsules held the power to end a life before it had begun. But fact was that they had, and once she swallowed them, there would be no way to withdraw, no going back.

'When you're old enough to play, you're old enough to pay,' the Doc had said during their argument, but Calico knew that children should not be a price, which had to be paid. They should be a joy and a blessing and people, who could not see that, did not deserve to be parents. And then there was the wellbeing of such a child to consider, because as a parent, you had a responsibility to ensure the best possible conditions for your offspring to grow.

Calico had never wanted children, never dared to trust herself with the life of a child and had always been afraid that she could not shoulder the responsibility. Furthermore, she could not give birth in good conscience when she knew the world she would be bringing a baby into.

She could not expose it to herself in good conscience either. She was a monster, a murderer. She already had so many lives on her conscience that she could be swimming in their blood, and, although Hawken would object, one more should not make that much of a difference. Abortion was not even murder, if you believed some people, because the foetus did not have awareness this early in the pregnancy. Some even claimed that it was not a person until it had left the womb.

And yet, as she stared at those two inconspicuous white tablets, she realised that it did make a difference. This child was not an enemy who threatened her or her loved ones, it was not some great evil that had to be vanquished or an opponent who refused to give up. It was her child, her own flesh and blood. Pure and untainted by the woes of the world. Innocent.

Something sour welled up in her throat and she had to concentrate not to vomit on the doctor's spotless floor. She had already killed so many innocents, people who had not stood in her way or opposed her, people who had never wronged her, people who did not deserve to die. If she could swim in the blood of her fallen enemies it was nothing compared to that of the lives she had stolen. The lives that still haunted her at night when she slept.

She wanted to curse herself. This internal discussion had already unfolded several times and in the end the result was always the same. By killing the foetus, she would be saving it from a world without pity, from a mother, who was a monster, and a father, who was good for nothing. It would be a mercy killing. It would be a kindness.

She made a grab for the pills.

**Elodea, The Grand Line  
>Jan. 15<strong>**th**** 2400**

"Move that keg over here, Hawken," a fifteen-year-old girl shouted and motioned with her arm towards the spot where she was arranging the remains of their hideout. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and her golden eyes shone with excitement in the glow of the lantern she was holding.

"Are you sure this is necessary Callie?" the black-haired boy asked, sweating from moving the powder keg they had stolen the day before. "We could probably put this to better use when it comes to a confrontation with one of those pirate crews."

"Probably," she agreed with a grin as she set the lantern down, "but we don't want anyone taking over our stuff, or going through our secrets. Do we?"

"Then set it on fire!" her contemporary exclaimed with exasperation. "There is no need to blow up the swamp."

She gave him a contemptible look and grabbed the keg from his hands. "Where's the fun in a fire? I want to leave with a bang! And if we splatter this whole place in stinking swamp sludge, it's even better. A big, fetid fuck-you to all the suckers on this island."

"What about the pirates?"

Mihawk Calico shook her head and wondered if he argued because he really was worried, because he knew she hated it, or if he did it for the sake of arguing. "I will protect you from the pirates. I can cleave them with my swords before they get within firing range. Satisfied?"

She knew he was not, but Hawken still threw up his hands in surrender. She knew that he knew she had made up her mind, and there was no point in arguing, because she was not going to reconsider anyway.

"You used to be fun, you know that?" she accused, grunting now with the effort of moving the gunpowder.

Hawken sighed and reclaimed the barrel. "And you never made much sense to begin with."

She slapped him on the shoulder, grin back on her face, as he placed the combustible on the pile of things they had decided not to bring on their journey: A manifesto describing what was required in order to be accepted into their gang, an inventory of the things they had stolen, Calico's collection of embroidered napkins, her mother's favourite shoes, Hawken's array of wood carvings, glass bottle lanterns and fishing rods, the tree stumps they used for chairs, the boards that had made up the walls of their hideout, the wildflowers they had gathered and dried. It would all burn.

"I'll set the fuse," the redhead said. "Should give us about half an hour to get out of here."

"Great," the boy responded, "I can't wait to get off this island!"

"Yeah, and out of this reeking bog!"

**Rainy Town, Evergreen Kingdom, the Grand Line  
>Jun. 21<strong>**st**** 2407**

The sun had long since set in a display as uneventful and dull as the sunrise had been that same morning when Calico found her way back to The Nocturne. She waved at Bol and Kaname, who had drawn the evening watch and were on guard duty until midnight. One never knew what could happen in a Grand Line town, and it was better to take precautions than to come back and find your ship gone or to be woken in the middle of the night with a knife at your throat.

The boards under her feet made no sounds of protest as she crossed the deck and neither, for that matter, did the stairs as she descended into the bowels of the ship. One of the first things she had taught herself after she bought The Nocturne was how to move silently about its hallways and staircases. She had oft wondered about that peculiar tendency on her part, but she had never figured out what had sparked it or why she had maintained the skill so meticulously throughout the years. Perhaps it was an unconscious precaution she had taken in case someone unwanted slipped onboard so she could overpower them before they knew she was there, perhaps it was a wish for privacy because everyone did not necessarily need to know where she walked. Perhaps she was just a sly, sneaky persona, who enjoyed being able to tiptoe about with no one being none the wiser.

There were only three rooms on this deck; the galley, the library and the training area, with the library in the stern beneath the Captain's cabin and the two other located to either side. She made her way down the hallway, aiming for the kitchen and the possible leftovers from dinner. She had not eaten anything since the scones that morning, and truth be told she was famished. She could hear voices through the open door, Denn and Hawken mainly, but she guessed the rest of her crew was there as well. They worried about her, she knew, and she had given them little reason to put their concerns aside.

She knew it was a bad thing to eavesdrop on her friends, but Calico was drawn to the sound of their discussion and the warm glow spilling trough the galley door lured her in like a moth to a flame.

"I don't know, Hawken," Denn's voice sounded exasperated and tired. "I just don't understand how she can do something like that, say something like that."

"It's her decision Denn," Hawken said, and Calico realized they were talking about her. He sounded just as tired as if this was a conversation they had repeated several times in the past few days. "If she does not want a baby, you cannot force her to."

"But to murder your own child –"

"Even if I agree with you," Ikara interrupted, "it is obvious that the Captain does not feel the same way. Abortion is a controversial matter, and you said it yourself, she has though it through. So even if we feel her reason is flawed, from her perspective she has made the choice that is right for her. We cannot fault her for that."

"But still," the Doc chimed in," there are other options than terminating the pregnancy. She could give it up for adoption."

"No," Hawken said quietly, as steady an unbending as a mountain, "she could not."

"You keep saying that, Hawken," Denn hissed, "but what does it even mean? It is not as if it would kill her to give it away."

"It wouldn't kill her," he acknowledged, "but it might very well be the death of the child."

"Would you just explain to us why that is?"

"No. It is not my story to tell."

Calico could understand Denn's frustration even if she felt a sting of betrayal that they were discussing this behind her back and not talking to her face to face. And she had to hand it to her best friend that his answers sure were infuriating. She also had to admit that the stubborn way he defended her and her decision was quite heart-warming.

"You are impossible, you know that?!" The young captain could imagine Denn throwing her hands up in surrender. "You and Callie both. Absolutely impossible!"

They lapsed into silence and Calico debated whether she should slink away before one of them decided to exit the room. It would be awkward for both her and the others if they discovered she had heard what they had said, even if it were only the last part.

"What did the captain mean when she called herself a monster?" Val piped in after a while, eighteen and as innocent as they come.

Hawken's tone was mild when he responded, "It's a long story, and not mine to tell either."

"She can't be though," the girl insisted. "She's good, and kind, and compassionate. She helps people."

"Indeed." Hawken's tone was bitter when he replied. "The problem is getting her to believe it."

There he went again, with his ignorant convictions and his naïve beliefs. He should know her better than anyone and still he refused to acknowledge the truth. She was not a good person.

Calico decided she had heard enough and turned to creep away before she was discovered. But before she could even take the first step, a loud mewl sounded from near her feet and a soft, furry cat rubbed itself against her lower leg with a purr. She almost jumped out of her skin, her heart rate increasing as adrenalin spiked and her muscles tensed, ready to flee or fight.

"Fatty!" the red-haired pirate hissed through her teeth and under her breath as silence once again settled over the congregation in the galley. A chair scraped over the wooden floor as she bent to pick up the grey tom and soon enough Ikara stuck her head out of the door.

"Captain," the other woman greeted as Calico stood there in the hallway with an armful of cat and tried not to look guilty.

"He surprised me," the redhead said and motioned toward the purring miscreant in her arms. There was no way she could head back to her cabin now without raising some kind of suspicion, and with a mental sigh, she prepared herself to play ignorant of what she had overheard. "Are there any food left?"

Moments later she was sitting in a chair at the dining table in the galley while Barra bustled around in the pantry to find something suitable to serve as a late dinner because he refused to reheat any of the leftovers from the crew's dinner. A slightly awkward silence was the only indication that her friends had been talking about her before The Fat had foiled her silent retreat, and if Calico had not heard them arguing, she would have assumed it was because they did not know how to treat her after all the things she had recently struggled with.

She made casual small talk; asked the Doc if he had managed to stock up on his medical supplies, and Barra nodded when she enquired about the pantry and the conditions of their supplies. Salen had not yet managed to locate the spare parts he would need as The Nocturne's resident ship's carpenter because he had had been on watch duty most of the day, but he expected it could be easily done in the morning.

Then Barra placed a plate of sandwiches in front of her, and she concentrated on filling the hole in her stomach. The rest of the table lapsed into silence once more as they watched her eat, and Calico could not help but feel the pressure of their watchful eyes. When it became clear that she did not intend to tell them of her day, a timid conversation started up, though it soon progressed into what on the surface seemed like a regular exchange between them. The tension was still simmering beneath the surface though, and Calico soon excused herself.

"I would like it if everything was packed and ready to go no later than tomorrow afternoon," she divulged before she departed. "If that proves difficult, however, we can stretch it a day or two. Whatever the case, I would like to get off this island as soon as possible."

"Where are we going in such a hurry Captain," Hawken asked.

"Well," she said with a grim smile, "I think it's about time I paid my dear uncle a visit."


End file.
